I hear people talking about needing some peace and quiet, needing some space, or some peaceful time…then I see those same people receive what they asked for and throw it away because they haven’t learned how to be calm.
Our lives are often full of busyness and different kinds of turmoil. The most challenging thing to do is to learn how to live in the calm. Rooted in peace.
The first response of most people to restful time…is to fill it with something. Be honest. You know this is true. Most of us don’t know how to have rest anymore. We have to fill time with screens, chores, doing something…anything to fill that time.
Whatever happened to calm?
Some of my most beneficial times have been when I would sit still and simply stare out at nature, or go walk through nature, or sit at the edge of the water somewhere. Some of the most glorious times are when the house is completely quiet. Suddenly everything seems to expand. I feel God’s presence. I see His hand.
Whether it’s indoors or outdoors…I find God in those moments. Every time.
If you’re in a season where you’re wondering where God is and how to hear Him…I encourage you to get still. Calm and quiet your soul and go be in nature. Sit in it until all the mess in your mind blows away with the wind and God can be heard. It’s as if our busyness becomes a fog in our minds that clouds out the voice of God. It clouds out our ability to see Him. Sit past the point of boredom and into the Presence of God.
Today I want to challenge you to get outside. Stand outside or slowly walk around. Put away your phone and all external noise and listen to the birds and the wind. Listen to creation. It is groaning in eagerness for the Lord. Creation points to heaven.
Listen and then truly hear God.
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who His children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also, groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) Romans 8:18-25
365 Days in the Presence 