Believe Manifesto

Over the past two years God has been whispering words to me. Words about quiet, solitude, rest, and prayer. My whole life I have never been afraid of sitting in the quiet and reading or just being in nature without talking. But with the hum of motherhood, work, and life there has been less time and space for the quiet. But my body and my mind seemed to crave this time.

One of the juxtapositions of this season has been numbing from things and being at peace in the quiet. So often, we have been so overwhelmed and busy that we just want to escape from this into a book, show, or screen. This false fix might give us a few minutes of relief but then often within twenty to thirty minutes we just feel anxious and overwhelmed again.

Until last year, I never really stopped to think about the massive amount of information we all take in every day. I was reading To Hell with the Hustle by Jefferson Bethke and he describes in full the ways that we take in decades worth of information within minutes. It makes me think about when Jesus was walking the earth and someone had something important to say, they had to TRAVEL just to relay the message. When they wanted to send news that Lazarus had died, they had to travel to tell him this news. Today, we live in a world where we can consume news all day every day. We can get sucked into a vacuum of information that may not even be helpful or useful.

Don’t get me wrong, I love obscure information as much as the next person, but God has started to reveal to me the cost of this. The cost is our peace and joy. God has reminded me that without the quiet, without the solitude, we cannot be full of HIM. We meet him in the quiet and that is where he fills us up. That is where he speaks to us. That is where he loves us in the deepest way. He doesn’t want to fight for our attention and in fact he will not compete with distraction. If we don’t take the time to get quiet with him, we will usually stop hearing him.

The truth about the quiet is that it is so easy to do, but also easy not to do. I think the word that has been coming to me over and over about this is WILLING. We have to be willing to meet with him for us to overcome all the excuses and distractions trying to keep us from this time. Once we are there and we get filled up, we feel his presence, and we feel that joy and peace–we yearn for that quiet time. I have realized I don’t want to live without it. It grounds my day. It helps me to have mercies new every single morning to refresh my soul like a stream of ever flowing water. In the quiet, I am reminded of who I am. I am a child of God. And in that quiet, because I know who I am and who I am with–I never feel alone.

I hope that you will choose to be willing this week friends! Take time in the quiet and the Lord will meet you there.