Quiet, part 3
rest, be still
This is part 3 in a series that began when I read the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (affiliate link). If you missed the first two parts, you can read part 1 here and part 2 here.
After last week’s shallow dive into what God says about quiet, my brain picked up the scent of a mini rabbit trail. (Does this happen to you too? It’s why I can’t ever get through a scripted Bible study in the appointed time.) It all started with Jeremiah 47:6, which says,
O thou sword of the LORD, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still.
This was one of the verses that came up in my search for the word quiet. You can see that in the prophet’s urging to be quiet, he equated it to “putting up oneself into his scabbard,” in other words, put your weapons away, stop fighting, stop striving. And rest and be still.
God infers a relationship between quiet and rest in several other verses:
So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet: for his God gave him rest round about. (2 Chronicles 20:30)
For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest. (Job 3:13)
I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came. (Job 3:26)
The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. (Isaiah 14:7)
And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places; (Isaiah 32:18)
So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry. (Ezekiel 16:42)
This doesn’t really prove anything, except that there is some kind of relationship between quiet and rest. If we take seriously God’s command to “study to be quiet,” it seems like it should bring rest to our lives, our bodies, our souls.
Then I thought about that passage in Hebrews 4 where God is talking about entering into his rest and how unbelief is the thing that keeps you from entering it. Then he says in verse 10:
For he that is entered into his [God’s] rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
So when we enter into God’s rest, we cease from our own works. We stop trying to control our circumstances, stop striving to make things happen, stop working to be accepted or good enough. We just rest in everything that God already is.
But then if we go back to Jeremiah 47:6, in the same breath God is telling them to be quiet and rest, he is also telling them to “be still.”
O thou sword of the LORD, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still.
And here’s where the rabbit took off.
If I asked you to quote a verse that uses the phrase “be still,” 98% of you would say, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). In this passage, God is reminding us that enemies will come against us and storms will rage in life, but the battle is not ours. It is his, and if we will “be still,” we can watch him handle it all far better than we could ourselves.
Remember when Moses was leading the million or so children of Israel out of Egypt, out of bondage, and they came to the Red Sea? Pharaoh and his armies were coming up behind them, and the people looked at them, then at the expanse of sea, then back at the Egyptians closing in on them. Panic began to take hold and they demanded of Moses why he didn’t just leave them in Egypt to be slaves. At least they didn’t die there, and Moe, this is all your fault!
And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.
There’s nothing you can do to save yourselves right now, but watch what God does to save you. When he made this statement, Moses did not know what God was going to do. He hadn’t been given the plan ahead of time and dry ground was only a pipe dream. But he trusted God enough to KNOW that he (God) would complete the plan he’d put into action.
God said to Moses (v16),
But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.
Get this (This is not actually part of this study, but it jumped out at me. Preachers call this a freebie.): God gave Moses three commands here: YOU, Moses, lift up your rod, YOU stretch out your hand over the sea, and YOU divide the sea. YOU do it. YOU part the Red Sea. Can you imagine? I can see Moses looking around and asking (in Robert De Niro’s voice), “You talkin to me?”
Surely Moses didn’t part the sea in his own power, but God allowed Moses to experience God’s immense power through his own hands. What a gift. (That was a sub-trail.)
But I wondered where else in the Bible God told his people to be still. There are only a few times God says this exact phrase as a command. (It is used a few times in other contexts.)
Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. (Psalm 4:4)
You can’t commune with your own heart until you learn to be still. Anxious worry is not being still. Catastrophizing (my specialty) is not being still. Ruminating about how you’re going to exact vengeance on your enemies is not being still. Standing in awe, as the first part of the verse says, sweeps all those other things away and forces you to focus on the One who can actually do something about your problems. Stand in awe . . . and be still.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10)
When you learn to be still and acknowledge his God-ness, he is exalted even among the heathen. I have seen this happen so many times. Again, the focus is on the Lord and all that he is.
Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. (Isaiah 23:2)
God is telling the people of this once-prosperous area to hold on a sec, don’t get so excited because judgment is coming. Just be still and wait for it. Stop all your self-righteous activity and watch the righteous judgment of God.
O thou sword of the LORD, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. (Jeremiah 47:6)
God has been using other nations in judgment against Israel, and now he wants them to stop. Put your sword in the scabbard, rest, and be still. God controls it all.
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:39)
We’ve all heard the story of Jesus and the disciples out on the sea after a long day of teaching and preaching. They launched the ship and Jesus went below to get some sleep. When a “great storm of wind” arose and the waves “beat into the ship so that it was now full,” they woke Jesus up and demanded, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” The ship is full of water and the wind is crazy and we’re going to die! Have you ever felt like that in life? I have.
Jesus’ response is a whole life lesson. Without hesitation “he arose, and rebuked the wind” and told the sea to “be still.” And look at the result: “there was a great calm.”
Being still (whether it’s you being still or the storms of life) produces calm. It gives us a chance to take a deep breath, slow down our racing heart, and remember that he is here. He sees us and our situation. He knows we can’t create our own calm so he makes it for us.
If I have learned one thing in this life, it’s that God is infinitely more able to do whatever needs to be done than I am. I have all these great ideas of how he could handle stuff. I think I know what a certain person needs or how a situation should be dealt with. And I usually try to sway the Lord to my way of thinking, as if maybe my idea hasn’t occurred to him. He probably sits up there on his throne chuckling at my silliness.
But when I finally remember to be still (stop striving and working, focus on him), rest in him and his perfect understanding and power, and just let him be God, everything goes better.