Be Still I've Got it From Here!

Psalms 46:1-10

 

There are times when the vicissitudes of life are rolling in like the tides of a tsunami; there are times when the dark clouds of depression have settled overhead; and there are those times when your house just does not seem like a home. In those times when the problem seems to be much larger than you. It is in this moment that God simply says, "BE STILL, I've got it from here!"

As Christians, we are not promised that there will not be botherations, complications, and enigmatic conundrums that are sometimes stiffling. We are not given a guarantee of effortless progression; on the contrary, we are told that without question, trials are going to come. In John 16:33, Jesus says, "These things have I spoken unto you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulations; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

The joy and peace does not come in the absence of struggle, but despite it.

Paul tells us that we are to "glory in our tribulations", and James admonishes us to "count it all Joy when we fall into vairous trials.' Each of these passages are written under the postulation that the trials are inevitable. There is no circumvention of the trials of this life. There is never a question as to if, just when.

The writer of Psalm 46 gets right to the point in verse one; "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." There is a wealth of doctrinal truth embedded in this one scripture.

First, we find that God is our refuge. This means he provides shelter from the dangers that surround us. He is our covering and comforter.

Next, we see that he is the source of our strength. It is in God that we live, move, and have our being. No matter how weak we may seem at any given moment of difficulty, we know that in God our weakness is the means by which God's strength is revealed and released. God shows up in the midst of our weaknesses and provides the strength necessary to emerge triumphantly.

The next couple of verses point to the fact that the writer is not willing to be moved by his circumstances. Though the enemy may be closing in, though the economy may be in decline, though relational situations are in flux, my unerstanding of who God is and who I am in Him, will not allow me to waver. I cannot be shaken by the outward circumstance because the inward man has been fed by the Spirit. The inward man (my spirit) is in constant communication with the Holy Spirit that resides within me and the Holy Spirit speaks to my spirit and says peace. 

Dr. Rick Wallace

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would bring to remembrance all that we had been taught. So, when the burdens of life begin to press us down, there should be something in our spirit that reminds us that NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST US SHALL PROSPER, it should bring to our remembrance that WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS, it should remind us that GOD WILL NEVER LEAVE US NOR FORSAKE US. There should be something in our spirit that disagrees with our circumstances.

To close things out, the writer speaks God's admonishment, "Be still". Sometimes the battle has worn you down. Sometimes you look up and there is nothing left. No matter how hard you try, you can't press forward. By all accounts, it seems as if the enemy has finally won.

You try to pray, but the words don't flow forward with any fluency. You turn to friends, but you find them complaining too. You turn to mother, but mother is incapable of producing any relief. At this moment of coliginous despair, God steps in and simply says, "BE STILL, I've got it from here.  Dr. Rick Wallace

Overcoming Your Circumstances Through Faith

What happens when your plans fall apart and everything that you once hoped for now seems lost? What happens when the dreams that drove you and filled your heart with passion begins to seem as if they are perpetually delayed? What happens when everything around you begins to crumble and your footing seems unstable? What will you do?

There are those times when nothing seems to be going your way. You pray, but God seems to be in the distance, totally indifferent to the agony and pain that you are experiencing. You call on friends, but they are aloof and unconcerned. You get the occasional “I will pray for you”, but no one is willing to stand and walk with you. What will you do?

There will come a point in your life when nothing makes sense. You are doing everything within your power to walk out your God ordained destiny. You are pressing on within the will of God, but it seems that the weight of the world is on your shoulders. I have learned that it is not the circumvention of life’s struggles and difficulties that insures victory in the life of the believer, but their response to those difficulties. Besides there can never be a victory without there being a battle.
When the vicissitudes of life roll into your paradise and all that seemed so certain has now become nebulous, this is when you trust God. David said that God is a refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble (Ps. 46:1). This means that God is there for you as a covering, but also to provide the strength necessary to pick yourself up and press forward.

The enemy wants you to consider your circumstances, but God is calling you to consider his power and love. He wants you to see Him, even in the midst of the darkness that is encapsulating you. God wants you to understand who He is and what He is willing to do on your behalf.

Maybe you are like me and you have experienced moments in which the pain was so intense that it paralyzed you. Maybe you too have experienced the force of darkness as it attempts to drain you of every ounce of strength and hope you have left within you. Maybe you have reached a place of despair in your life where you are simply trying to survive. It’s okay, every believer has been there. If you would speak with Job he would be able to tell you about a place of darkness that he thought would destroy him. If you were to sit down with Moses, he would tell you about the many nights of doubt he struggled with before his mountain top experience. If you would speak with Peter, he would tell you about his struggles with failure and inadequacy. If you spoke to Jeremiah, he would testify about the time he almost gave up. Yes, each of these men found themselves in a place of darkness, but it was in this place of darkness that they become most acquainted with God.

Dr. Rick Wallace

In verse 10 of Psalms 46, God speaks through David with a simple but powerful command; “Be still and know that I am God. In the Greek “be still” is translated “cease striving”. Be still, stop striving, stop attempting to push through on your own, and let me move on your behalf. God is saying unequivocally, “Stop striving to no avail and simply recognize who I am in your life. I am bigger than your circumstances. I am bigger than your pain. I am bigger than your failures. I am bigger than your loneliness. I am bigger than your financial difficulties. I a bigger than those obstacles that are stifling your business. Know that I am God and rest in the assurance that I reign supreme and that I am in total control.

When it seems hopeless is the time that you allow your faith in God to be your stabilizer. You may not be able to see it now, but your struggles, your dark moments, your loneliness, and even your failures place you right in the middle of a move of God. God is working in the undercurrents of your struggles. God is about to execute the impossible in the midst of your situation. Don’t listen to the sweet nothings of negativity that the enemy is attempting to whisper into your ear. God has made a promise to never leave nor forsake you. He has made a promise to protect you. He has revealed that you are more than a conqueror through Christ.

Your circumstances are simply an opportunity to trust God, and God never fails. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace

Faith Bends Facts

28 Tell them: As surely as I live,” this is the Lord’s declaration, “I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. (Ex. 14:28, HCSB)

This verse of scripture speaks volumes into the faith and speech of believers. This conversation between God and Moses takes place immediately after the twelve spies return with their report to the people of Israel of all they saw in Canaan (the promised land). Ten of the spies came back saying that it is all that God says it was (unbelievably beautiful and having an abundant supply all things necessary for living). There was just one problem; there were giants in their land. So, their final assessment was: we can't take the land.

Now God had given them the land, but required them to go in and possess it. He was not sending them in blind for He promised them that he would be with them and that they could surely do it. Nonetheless, these 10 spies said that they couldn't. The two other spies, Joshua and Caleb, said that the land could be taken, because God had already given it to them, they only needed to go in and possess it. The people decided to believe the other ten spies and begin to say that God had asked them to do the impossible.

Allow me a bit of digression for a moment. When God is in the midst of your movement there is no such thing as impossible. In fact, through academic study and experiential observation, I can tell you that the more impossible the endeavor, the more powerful God's movement in it becomes. I have learned that when I simply let go and let God, the impossible becomes possible and the extraordinary becomes ordinary.

I digress, God told Moses, "just as they have spoken and I have heard them say, so shall I do to them." God said since you said that you can't, you won't. If you take the time to read this entire passage, you will find that their lack of faith and the declaration that they could not do it, was considered by God to be a direct complaint against Him. When God has promised to walk you through the storm and you keep worrying and believing the lies of your circumstances, you are saying to God, I don't believe you can do what you said you can do. I don't believe your power is enough to manage my moment. I don't believe you will come through.

One of the problems with believers is we have bought into the distorted view of factual information bequeathed to us through secular paradigms. Most of us have been taught that facts are solid and they cannot be manipulated. The truth is facts are fluid because not even factual reality can resist the power of faith through love. In other words, faith bends facts. In life one of two things are happening daily; either your faith is transcending the facts, or the facts are transcending your faith. My friend, nothing trumps faith in God, not even facts.

It is interesting to me the emphasis the Bible places on speech. We are told that there is the power of life and death in the tongue and admonished to choose life. We are told that we will have to give an account of every idle word that comes out of our mouth. We are told that we can determine what is in a man's heart by observing what comes out of his mouth. In this particular instance, God said, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so shall it be.

Here is my first question: What are you speaking into your life? How many words come out of your mouth daily that reinforce the negative happenings in your life? (Okay that was bonus question). The thing is many of you are self-perpetuating your misery with your negative imprecations. Stop speaking anything that is not God's will for you into your life. Stop responding the fact as if they are fixed. I'm not saying that this will stop the vicissitudes and challenges of life from rolling in. Trials and tribulations are a part of life, but faith and the words that come from a faith filled heart produce the power to exit each one of these storms victoriously.

God had never told the Israelites that they would not have to fight; He told them that they would never lose. He told them that He would fight for them. He told them that no weapon formed against them would prosper. I have read the bible from cover to cover too many times to count (not including daily study, teaching, etc) and when I get to Isaiah 54:17, I continuously read the same thing: No weapon formed against you will prosper. It does not say, there will be no weapons formed against you. In fact, the context and sentence structure is implicit that there will be weapons formed against you, but then it becomes direct in the assertion that the weapons will not prosper.

Here is my second and final question (maybe)? Who are you listening to when determining what you are going to believe? Here is my advice to you. Stop letting narrow minded people who have no vision convince you that the vision you have for life is unrealistic. Stop letting people who gave up on their dreams talk you out of yours. Stop allowing those that are unacquainted with the power of faith convince you that facts are final. Faith bends facts. Look, the fact was that before The Battle of Gibeon, the sun had never stood still in the History of mankind, however, that did not stop Joshua from praying to God to stop it. When you study this passage, Joshua did not ask as if there could be any other response to his faith; he declared and decreed.

12 On the day the Lord gave the Amorites(AB) over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
    and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 So the sun stood still,
    and the moon stopped,
    till the nation avenged itself on[b] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar. (Joshua 10:12-13, NIV)

God desires more audacious Christian believers like Joshua, not afraid of the impossible, but daring to reach for it. Speak life. Speak life into that hopeless situation. Speak life into your dead circumstances. Speak life into your dwindling hopes. Irregardless to what your circumstances declare, make your declarations of your faith. The writer of Hebrews reminds us to hold fast our confession of faith without wavering. The two words "hold fast" is actually the double use of one Greek word "katecho" (kat-ekh'-o) meaning to hold down, possess, to seize. We are to take hold of our faith and stand firm in it.

So, remember the next time someone starts listing the facts and painting the illusionistic portraits of negativity, that your faith trumps their facts. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace  

The Power of Silence

"Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10).

Is there any note of music in all the chorus as mighty as the emphatic pause? Is there any word in all the Psalter more eloquent than that 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."  --Selected

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"All-loving Father, sometimes we have walked under starless skies that 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 there 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 was 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." --Unknown

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So, often we find it extremely difficult to end the frenetic and unsettled behavior we perpetuate in the midst of our storms. Our natural human proclivity to find our own resolutions normally lead us further and further from God's design for our lives. When God tells David to "be still" (accurately translated, stop striving), He is saying that it is not your job to figure it out; your job is to trust Me  to work it out on your behalf. This is that place where you experience the silence and it may seem that nothing is being done, but learn to listen in the silence; learn to sense Gods movement in the silence. The calm and still during this period of silence can be unnerving as vibrations of uncertainty are felt in the depths of your soul. I just want you to understand that God works His best works in the silence.

It is the audacity of our faith that God responds to, not our frenetic behavior. God's power is activated by faith. Sometimes it is your responsibility to simply stand still and let God do what only He can do. Prepare to experience the supernatural when you are able to rest in the peace that transcends the moment. This ability to stand still is not passive in nature because it is done from a mindset of expectancy; this brings a thought process that is intertwined and inextricably bound to the process of breakthrough and elevation.
~ Dr. Rick Wallace