Be Still and Know

“Be still and know that I am God.”

This is what I heard from God today. I started praying out loud and it just poured out, my worries and fears of now and the future. I didn’t even know I was so worried. So that’s why I’ve been breaking out this week. When I was finished with my little rant, I thought about asking God to cure my zits, but I decided to go a bit deeper and asked him to make me content in my circumstances. He spoke to my heart and said, “Be still and know that I am God.”

This phrase is not new to me. I’ve read it plenty of times somewhere in Psalms, but I couldn’t remember exactly where so I looked it up. Thank you biblegateway.com!

Psalm 46:9-11

New International Version (NIV)

⁹ He makes wars cease
    to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields^[a] with fire.
¹⁰ He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.”

¹¹ The Lord Almighty is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress.

God is my defender and my fortress! “Be still and know that I am God.” No matter what happens God will defend me, and keep me safe. God is so mighty and he knows where I need to be, I don’t need to worry, just be still and know.

Broke, Single, White Girl

When I came home from college, I felt lost. A broke, single, white girl living in her parent’s basement. I thought my identity was nonexistent because of my lack of worldly things. My not-so-stable job or jobs combined with my failing internship search was making me feel like a failure in my field. My status as “single” was making me depressed. While it seemed like so many people my age or younger were getting married, I was still waiting to get asked out for the first time. My church was no help in my identity search, I felt completely out of touch in my home church.

I was being consumed with the way culture and people around me perceived things. I could either go on and hate my circumstances or ask my self the question I knew would take me to the answer. “What is the greatest thing in life?” The Sunday school answer to this is correct, but whenever I ask that question, this verse comes to mind.

“’Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment…” (Matt 22:36-38 ESV)

I realized, I had not been following the greatest commandment faithfully. I was leaving God out of my new identity, but that only leads to failure and doubt. Something I was fully aware of when I was focusing on an identity apart from Christ. Remembering who God is and what Jesus had done let me take a look at the identity I already had. A woman saved from hell by faith in Jesus Christ, A follower of Jesus and a sower of this good news of Christ.            

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”(2 Corinthians 5:14-17 ESV)

This is my true identity. Jobs, relationships, money, friends, they can’t define my identity because I am a new creation in Christ.