My following post is pretty long.  Feel free to print it off and save it for when the house is quiet.  Get a cup of tea or cocoa and soak in what the Lord might speak to your heart while reading!  Blessings!

My absence these past few days has been the Lord’s leading me into stillness.  I mentioned in a recent post how I was struggling with fear and anxiety.  I kept praying the Lord would show me what to do with these things I was dealing with.  I did go through a short time of hearing silence from Him.  Thankfully I have been through enough of those times that I have learned to just wait, because I KNOW He is listening.  Those times aren’t always so easy, though, especially when the heart is in so much turmoil.

I finally heard Him speaking to my heart, in that still small voice, through prayer and the reading of my all time favorite devotional.  A few days ago I retreated into our school room to read my Bible.  This is the scripture that I read and the thoughts of Mrs. Charles E. Cowman that followed:

“BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.” Psalm 46:19 (Oh what comfort in those words alone!)

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Is there any note of music in the chorus as mighty as the emphatic pause?  Is there any word in all the Psalter more eloquent than the one word, SELAH (PAUSE)?  Is there anything more thrilling and awful than the hush that comes before the bursting of the tempest and the strange quiet that seems to fall upon all nature before some preternatural phenomenon or convulsion?  Is there anything that can touch our hearts as the power of stillness?

There is for the heart that will cease from itself, “the peace of God that passeth all understanding,” a “quietness and confidence” which is the source of all strength, a sweet peace “which nothing can offend,” a deep rest which the world can neither give nor take away.  There is in the deepest center of the soul a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter in and hush every other sound, we can hear His still, small voice.

There is in the swiftest wheel that revolves upon its axis a place in the very center, where there is no movement at all; and so in the busiest life there may be a place where we dwell alone with God, in eternal stillness.  There is only one way to know God.  “Be still, and know.”  “God is in His Holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

“All loving Father, sometimes we have walked under starless skies dripped darkness like drenching rain.  We despaired of starshine or moonlight or sunrise.  The sullen blackness gloomed above us as if it would last forever.  And out of the dark spoke no soothing voice to mend our broken hearts.  We would gladly have welcomed some wild thunder peal to break the torturing stillness of that over~brooding night.

“But Thy winsome whisper of eternal love spoke more sweetly to our bruised and bleeding souls than any winds that breathe across Aeolian harps.  It is thy ‘still small voice’ that spoke to us!  We were listening and we heard!  We looked and saw Thy face radiant with the light of LOVE.  And when we heard Thy voice and saw Thy face, new life came back to us as life comes back to withered blooms that drink the summer rain.”

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It was after I read these soothing, soul refreshing words that I turned to the scripture in Psalm 81:6~7 “I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the baskets.  You called in trouble, and I delivered you.  I answered you in the secret place of thunder.  I tested you at the waters of Meribah.”  OH the joy that rushes in when we have waited quietly for Him and then He speaks!  I immediately praised the Lord for relieving my shoulder of the burden of fear and anxiety trying to rob the joy from my life.  What is it the Lord would like to relieve you from today?  Are you still enough…waiting to hear His voice?

“Blessed is he that waiteth.” Daniel 12:2

Can you IMAGINE!?  We are blessed, because we just wait.

Mrs. Charles E. Cowman includes her thoughts on waiting in “Streams in the Desert”.

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“No, but simply wait.  Wait in prayer, however.  Call upon God and spread out the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid.  Wait in faith.  Express your unstaggering confidence in Him.  Believe that if He keep you tarrying even till midnight, yet He will come at the right time; the vision shall come, and shall not tarry.”

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 Wait, patiently wait,

God is never late;

Thy budding plans are in Thy Father’s holding,

And only wait His grand divine unfolding.

Then wait, wait,

Patiently wait.

Trust, hopefully trust,

That God will adjust

Thy tangled life; and from its dark concealings

Will bring His will, in all its bright revealings.

Then trust, trust

Hopefully trust.

Rest, peacefully rest

On thy Savior’s breast;

Breathe in His ear thy sacred high ambition,

And He will bright it forth in blest fruition.

Then rest, rest,

Peacefully Rest!

By Mercy A. Gladwin