Sitting Still

"Be still and know that I am God."

This is the verse that haunts me. 

It perplexes me and challenges me.

I'm not good at being still and I'd rather feel something than know something...by nature.

Illumination is happening though and I think I'm starting to get it, starting to do it. During the crazy rain storm Wednesday night, as I struggled, sick with constant nose blowing, headache and negative thinking, I sat alone on my bed. I opened the window to let the fresh wind and mist into the room and on my face. No music. No audio sermon. Nothing. Just the mist and wind. Repeating the verse over and over, I asked God to help me understand it. 

"What is it exactly that you want me to 'know' about you here...now...that I need?" 

Of course there was no audible voice or external revelation, because I opened my Bible and read Him, in my orderly, chronological way of Bible study:

"Know that the Lord Himself is God, it is He who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture." Psalm 100:3

Just because you study the Bible in an orderly, chronological way, doesn't mean that He can't speak to you in a creatively and supernaturally. I asked Him what He wanted me to know about Him and He answered exactly. That is a living Word.

So then, I sat in the mist and pondered knowing about who He really is and who I am...our stable, victorious relationship...and all the implications of that to my problems. I had much good to THINK about then and it led to FEELING better. I've just had it backward...wanting to feel good first, then to translate that into some truth to live by. In reality, I run to God's truth first, know it, live it, then receive the good feelings it graciously imparts on my thrashing, ravenous soul. But I have to start by being still,...then just know something true. He created the whole world out of nothing, so why wouldn't he create good feelings...joy out of nothing but stillness and quiet too. Let Him speak into that stillness through the scriptures...He has so much to say...so much healing....so much hope. 

God made me an intensely feeling person. I'm not trying to change that, nor do I wish to. But we intensely feeling people need to direct and master our emotions for Christ's sake. Unchecked, they'll destroy, but mastered, they can change the world...or at least just your own.