Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the LORD of all the righteous acts of the LORD, which he did to you and to your fathers.
1 Samuel 12:7
When I was an assistant pastor, our church used to do a teen camp in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia every summer. It was a beautiful place surrounded by trees, mountains, and wildlife. The one part of the wildlife that I’m sure every person there would love to have gotten rid of was the gnats. They would not leave us alone. They felt the need to get in your eyes, your nose, your ears, and just about every other place they felt they could be the most annoying. It was hard to just stand still and enjoy the beauty around us because if we tried to stand there for more than a second, a cloud of gnats would come try to carry us away to an undisclosed location. One solution we had actually found quite effective was to tuck a dryer sheet into the collar of our shirts. It sounds crazy, but it worked to help ward off the droves of angry pests who wouldn’t leave us alone.
There are many petty annoyances in life that do the same thing to us spiritually. The devil will do everything he can to keep us from just being still so we can hear the voice of God speaking to us. When we can stop, let the world stop around us, and be calm, then God can use that time to really deal with us as His children. That is why the devil tries to flood us with so many things to keep us busy. Most of those things are not even bad things, but they are enough to keep us from having the relationship with God that we need to have with Him if we are going to be spiritually successful. David said in Psalm 4:4, “commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.”
To get rid of those annoyances, we need to come up with solutions to help us set aside the distractions that come between us and God. The most important thing is a fresh anointing of the power of God. If we can renew our commitment to serve God, then it gives us a goal to aim at and the motivation to make it work. On the practical side, we must purposefully set aside a time that cannot be moved when we meet with God. Early in the morning generally works best because the business of the day has not had time to crowd out that time we must spend with God. The morning is usually still and allows us the quiet time where we can hear the voice of God. Also, think about turning off the radio while driving, putting down the headphones while working, and turning off the television and internet in the evenings. Allow God to use that time to speak to you and you to Him instead of having so much noise that communication becomes impossible. Be still, and listen for God’s leading in your life.
Read also: 1 Samuel 12:6-16
Quote of the day: “Never get so busy doing the work of the kingdom that you forget who the King is.”