Like Jesus: Being With Jesus - Stillness

Introduction

What do you do when your world is turned upside down? What do you do when you feel like you are in the midst of a storm? Does stress make you want to run away? Have you ever daydreamed about running away to a far away land and just leaving it all behind?

We all handle stress in different ways and most of them unhealthy. For some of us, when stress hits…we hit the fridge. When the world comes crashing down around us, we turn to our two best friends Ben & Jerry.

For others of us, maybe food isn’t your vice, maybe it’s alcohol. You get home after work or at the end of a long day and man, I just gotta have a drink. And one drink, turns to two or ten. Either way, you pass out and the cycle starts all over again the next day.

When we talk about food and alcohol on the whole, we know the Bible isn’t against such things, but when it comes to coping with this life, it is most certainly against us indulging in the things of this world rather than running to our creator. The definition of an idol is anything we put in the seat that God is supposed to sit in.

When it comes to dealing with stress, we are supposed to cast our cares upon the Lord. We are supposed to put our trust in Him. We are supposed to look to Him to calm our fears and anxieties, but too often we create idols of food, alcohol and drugs and run to them to calm our nerves.

God’s desire is for us to spend time with Him and in doing so, he reveals himself as our refuge in the midst of the storm. He is the one who can truly calm our nerves and chase away our fears. He does this because He loves us and wants what is best for us.

We’ve been spending the past few weeks talking about the devotional life of a Christian. We have talked about simply “Being With Jesus”, which is the first part of this sermon series we are in. God wants us to be with Him. And by being with Him, we are transformed to be more Like Jesus.

Today we are continuing this series with a look at a Psalm. We are going to look at Psalm 46, and I would encourage you to get out your bible and the Cornerstone Church App and follow along with the notes. The words will be on the screen as well.

Main Text

Psalm 46 (ESV)

To the choirmaster. Of the Sons of Korah. According to Alamoth. A Song. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

This Psalm, written by the Sons of Korah, can be broken down into three parts. The overall theme of this Psalm is trusting in the Lord. Finding our refuge in Him in spite of what is going on around us. In other words, no matter what our stressors are in life, we should run to God who is our fortress and refuge. He will protect us.

Each of the three parts of this Psalm ends with the word, Selah. Selah means to pause. It’s a musical term, remember the Psalms are songs that were meant to be sung. So you would sing the first three verses and then pause.

From what I have read, the pause or selah meant you were supposed to stop and think about what you just sang. Now, this isn’t known for sure or not, but some scholars even speculate that when they got to the word Selah in the song, even the musicians were supposed to stop. Everything was to stop or be still.

This is a good segue into what we are going to talk about today, which is stillness. God ordered stillness in the Psalms and he also orders stillness in our lives. When it comes to our devotional lives, God wants us, like this Psalm says, to “be still and know that I am God.”

We’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking about the importance of solitude and silence, today we will tackle the last piece of this highly important spiritual discipline, which is stillness. When we enter into prayer, there should be times of stillness.

Now for me, this is where I struggle the most. I can be alone fairly easy, I can even be silent, which may seems like an impossibility for a preacher, but man the one I really struggle with is being still. I’m much better at praying when I walk. I can prayer walk all day, but if I’m sitting in my prayer room, it’s so much harder.

So I’m not preaching at you today, more like preaching at myself and confessing, this is really a difficult thing for me. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Actually it’s the opposite, if something is hard for us, that’s a good sign that we need to practice it even more.

With that in mind, I want to look at three reasons why stillness is important for us today in our devotional lives with God. The first one is that…

Stillness Creates Assurance

There’s a few things that happens in stillness. When I cease doing, what I’m really saying is this, “Lord, I can’t do this, you have to.” We are essentially giving up our doing and activity. Again, it’s not because those things are not important (they certainly are), it’s because we realize that in our own strength, we can accomplish nothing. We stop moving, so He can move!

What this does in us is that it produces assurance. Assurance that God will do what he said he will do. That he is faithful. It’s us putting our faith to the test. Now for some of you this is the opposite of what you have heard. You may have heard in order to put your faith to the test you have to go out and do something.

The quote goes something like this…Want to see great things from God? Attempt great things for God! Or, if you are going to walk on water, you gotta get out of the boat!

I’m telling you there is truth in those statements, but even in those attempts, there are going to be times where you will doubt and you will struggle and you will need God to reassure you. That’s where stillness comes in.

Because when the storm comes, you are going to have to learn to stay still. To stand firm. Peter learned this. You have to keep your eyes on Jesus. It’s not about you getting out of the boat, it’s about who you have your eyes fixed upon.

BE STILL AND KNOW I AM GOD!

This is the point, these two statements are linked by the word “and”. It’s Be Still AND Know. You demonstrate that you know that he is God by your being still. These two work together. You are stepping out in faith by being still.

Our fathers had much to say about stillness, and by stillness they meant the absence of motion or the absence of noise or both.

They felt that they must be still for at least a part of the day, or that day would be wasted. God can be known in the tumult of the world if His providence has for the time placed us there, but He is known best in the silence. So they held, and so the sacred Scriptures declare. Inward assurance comes out of the stillness. We must be still to know.

Psalm 46:10

God Tells the Man Who Cares, 10.

A. W. Tozer

In order to know, and I mean really know, not just head knowledge but deep rooted knowledge that flows from your faith, you have to be able to be still.

God is described as things that stand firm, that are still - A rock, a fortress, a refuge. In this passage, it talks about the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. These are things that do not move. We are in Him! We should not be moved.

Stillness Increases Trust

One of the big ideas in our passage today is war. In verses 6-9, we see that in this world, the nations will rage, kingdoms will fall, there will be wars and all types of calamities.

Here’s what we know though, if we trust in God, he is our refuge, He is our strength. The process of stillness was created in part to teach us to trust Him. Stillness puts in a position to learn one of God’s greatest lessons.

While we seek to do God’s will, we must not forget His fundamental call to stillness before Him. When we are still and quiet in His presence, we put ourselves in the most teachable position possible.

Charles Stanley

And one of the things that God wants to teach you most is trust. Trust Him! He wants you to trust Him not just with your salvation, but in your daily life. That’s why Jesus spent so much time talking through our cares and anxieties. He wants you to put your trust in him for your cares, concerns, daily needs, stress, anxieties. He’s saying, “trust me, I’ve got you.”

When you spend time being still before the Lord, it increases your ability to trust because in those moments you are not relying on your activity for favor. You are resting in the knowledge that He loves you and He cares for you and He is going to take care of you.

So many of you are fighting battles and trying to carry the load, but what Jesus is asking of you is this, give your cares and worries and concerns to me and I will fight your battles for you. This isn’t new, listen to what God said to Moses when the Egyptians were chasing them down.

Exodus 14:14 NRSV

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

It is in these moments of stillness that God fights your battles for you. He knows what is going on in your life. He knows about what your kids are doing. He knows about your health concerns and He wants to fight for you. You have only to keep still.

God is our refuge and strength the Psalmist says, a very present help in trouble. Do you believe that? We don’t need to fear and we can stay calm and still in the battle because He fights for us. He makes the wars cease. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. The Lord of Hosts is with us! He is our fortress!

If you are in Him, if you are living in that fortress, you do not need to worry. The enemy cannot breach the gates. We are safe in secure as long as we stand firm, remain still in Him.

Stillness Produces Growth

When it comes to growth, because our trust and assurance in Him grows when we remain still before the Lord, what we will see is that we will grow as Christians.

Is your Christian walk stagnating? Is your growth stunted? The answer may be that you need to spend time in solitude and silence and stillness before the Lord. God wants us to grow in our Christian walk and one of the ways that we grow is by growing deeper.

I cannot be the man I should be without times of quietness. Stillness is an essential part of growing deeper.

Chuck Swindoll

If you want to grow deeper, it starts with your devotional life. You cannot expect to grow as a Christian without a robust devotional life. And by that, I mean the things we have been talking about. Get into a place of solitude with the Lord. Get silent before Him. Be still and know that He is God. These are all essential elements to growing deeper.

Matthew 6:6 ESV

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Get into the secret place with the King! You have access to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. You don’t need a priest, you don’t need to be perfect, you don’t need the right words, you have everything you need to spend time with the creator of the universe!

The word that Jesus uses here for room is describing an inner room, a closet, in your house. This is where we get the phrase prayer closet. It’s a secret chamber or storehouse for you and Jesus. One of the reasons I like this phrase is it gives us an idea of how much movement we should be doing. You can’t move much in a closet. Get still before the Lord!

The secret to prayer, is found in the things we’ve talked about the past few weeks. This idea of stillness is huge when mixed with silence and solitude. Your father, who sees in secret will reward you. That’s the promise of Jesus. God is watching you and waiting for you. Come and spend time with Him.

With that in mind, I’d like to get practical for just a moment as we close. I have a couple of very practical pieces to this that I want to discuss about stillness and what it looks like. Perhaps you’ve never been into your prayer closet. The only prayers you’ve ever prayed came over the dinner table.

I want to talk about what this practically looks like.

Practical Keys To Stillness

We Don’t Move - We literally remain still. Try to still your body. This isn’t comfortable for most of us. This will likely be tough for you at first. You will get in your closet or room or back porch or wherever you can find solitude and silence and you may last for a couple of minutes or thirty seconds and you will be ready to get up and move around or you’ll think this isn’t doing anything, I’m done. Trust the Lord. He wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t worthwhile. Don’t move. Everything around you will be calling your name. Stay still.

We Wait - So often when we come into a devotional time with the Lord and we remain still during the devotional time, we think we’ve accomplished all we need to do. This is not so. The next thing we have to do is wait. We wait on the Lord. Lam 3:25

Lamentations 3:25 ESV

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

We continue to wait on God. That’s what he is asking from us. By waiting we show that we trust Him. Think of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. When their faith waned, the couple tried to bring the promise about in their own flesh. They didn’t wait on the Lord. But later, God showed them what faithfulness looked like by fulfilling his promise and they got pregnant with Isaac. Oh that they would have waited on the Lord. When it comes to quiet time. Just wait. And let your waiting infiltrate the rest of your life. If God has promised you something, waiting will be a huge part in receiving it.

3. We Trust - Waiting and trust really go hand in hand. When we get into our prayer closet, what we are doing is exhibiting trust in God. Rather than going out and trying to obtain through your own efforts the promises of God, you simply wait and trust. You put your trust where it belongs in the prayer closet. Typically what happens in our devotional life is that we are reminded of our needs. By bringing those needs to God in stillness, we are showing that we trust in Him completely.

4. We Pray - This leads us into prayer. In our devotional lives, we pray to God with boldness and faith, asking Him to do that which He is eager to do anyway. He knows your needs. He knows them before you even ask for them, so why do we ask? Because we are showing that are looking to Him to answer those needs.

Conclusion

Prayer Points

Father, show me where you are asking me to be still and trust you.

Jesus, what assurances do you want me to have today as I wait on you?