Choose Being Still Before the Lord Instead of Isolation
Isolation is meeting with the devil, solitude is meeting with the Lord. - Ben Courson
How often do you just want to run away? I used to feel like this A LOT, it is less frequent these days but I still have my moments. Today, the culture seems so toxic as if everyone is always ready to start a fight. It is easy to understand the temptation to isolate from everyone and everything. Self preservation screams “Hunker down & hide until this all blows over”. It is an easy temptation to succumb to if we believe when we are alone that we can “control” our environment and who and what we allow in to our little sphere of life, until you realize that you are simply hiding from reality.
Isaiah 26:3
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
When we choose to be alone with the sole focus to keep the world out, it is often easy for the enemy to see an easy path straight into our thoughts. We are already frustrated and typically in fear, the perfect recipe for the devil to have a party in your mind. The kind of party that is going to cause a whole lot of damage that you aren’t going to want to clean up later.
How about instead of a full on evacuation plan from life, we choose to be still before the Lord.
We choose to be calm before him, bathe in his peace. There is nowhere we can run that the world won’t follow, but when we are in the presence of the Lord we will find solitude and peace.
Several years ago, the Lord gave me a vivid picture of what I really looked like before the Lord and it was pathetic.
I live to be productive; it is a big struggle for me to be still before the Lord. Several years ago, the Lord gave me a vivid picture of what I really looked like before the Lord and it was pathetic. It is a big reminder of how I don’t want to be, but often I still am. He gave me a picture of a child, about age 3, with a parent holding their hand and calmly trying to explain something. This child was trying to get their hand away from the parent and squirming all over the place, almost to the point of falling to the ground just to get away. The whole time, the child is loudly saying over and over again “Ok, I got it! I got it!”.
I didn’t want to be still before the Lord and listen.
Hopefully you can envision what this may look like, especially if you’ve raised toddlers. That was me! I didn’t have time to listen. I got the point God! I just wanted to move on and do what I wanted to do. That was a painful picture for me, but it could not have been more accurate. I still struggle with being still before the Lord, I have a hard time turning my busy brain off so I can listen. That picture snaps me right back to what I don’t want to look like before the Lord though. I WANT TO HAVE SPACE TO TRULY HEAR WHAT GOD HAS FOR ME.
Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God.
Find a way to find solitude and intentionally meet with the Lord. A time of day that you aren’t already exhausted. Be present with the intention to not only talk and vent to God, but to LISTEN to him. Find a quiet place that you won’t get distracted. Some of you are probably saying…there’s no chance of that for me! I have a solution! My house is loud with my husband and teenage boys; there’s no chance I can mentally tune them out. There is a YouTube channel that has uninterrupted instrumental soaking worship Soaking in His Presence . It is my secret weapon! I put in some earbuds and it is AMAZING. Beautiful music that drowns out all the chaos around me and helps me connect with God.
The Lord bless you literally means “on bended knee.” It describes a servant kneeling out of respect for his master or a lover kneeling to ask his beloved for her hand in marriage.
I would encourage you to kneel and pray before the Lord. Ask him to clear your mind of anything that is not of him. Pray for peace within your heart and in our world. Pray for your enemies that they would know the love of our wonderful Father God. If we can calm our troubled minds long enough to find solitude in the Lord instead of trying to escape our reality, we will find TRUE peace, strength, endurance. May we be blessed beyond measure by our Lord because we humbled ourselves and on bended knee prayed before him in full expectation of his goodness. It may not mean that the whole world is butterflies and rainbows when you open your front door again, but with God’s strength within us we won’t feel like slamming the door shut and hiding under our bed. After all….
Romans 8:31
If God is for us, who can be against us.
Love God’s light and our relationship with him, do not be lured into the dark alone with your thoughts. Let us draw our spirit and our mind towards the light and not be tempted to dwell in the darkness of this world. Each of us in uniquely created in his image and we will not be made to feel less than. We are more than conquerors, we are GOD’S CHILDREN!
1 John 2:8
The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
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