SpringCleaning! Be Still March 25

SpringCleaning!
March 25, 2021

Be Still

Psalm 46:10, ‘Surrender your anxiety. Be silent and stop your striving and you will see that I am God. I am the God above all the nations and I will be exalted throughout all the earth (TPT).’

There have been many emotions that have been imbibed in the past year that we have all just survived. Or for some, surviving still. I remember the resounding truth I whispered many times just to get by was ‘Life is not for wimps’. Nothing like hitching yourself up by your bootstraps and telling yourself to get along; there is simply no use giving up now.

But for many, it has been a season of marinating in tension, being slow-cooked in anxiety. All of everything some have held dear has been tossed in the pressure cooker of life, and under pressure, decisions and dreams, futures and fantasies, hopes and hurts have been roiling. What do we do to SpringClean the stockpot of our existence so that things like stress and tension and anxiousness can be tossed out with the leftovers no one would eat?

Philippians 4:6 tells us, ‘Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life (TPT).’ Really?! you say, don’t worry about a thing?! Ha! you scoff. Man, the writer of that Book of the Bible sure didn’t just survive 2020 and the pandemic of mega proportions, nor the economic crisis and the collapse of the world as we know it. He didn’t stare through the riots in the streets while cities burned. What does he know about my life and why does he get to speak into my situation?

But Paul knew. Before Paul (then, Saul) knew Jesus, I have no idea what his life was like, except he terrorized Christ-followers. But after coming to the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, sent to be the Savior of the world, to redeem his life and all of ours from the pit, Paul hit bad times. He had his own pandemic of sorts to deal with, was shipwrecked, imprisoned, tortured, lost everything, found everything, learned to live in all kinds of seasons, and came out on the other side with the advice the world needs now. ‘Don’t be tugged this way and that. Nor worry about anything at all. Instead, immerse yourself in prayer, and don’t just mumble the words of need, but speak them with faith and insistence, and then, don’t forget to say “Thanks!”. Hold nothing back. Give it all to Him.’ This is a survivor’s manual to you and me, because, guess what? it works!

One last thing, as your crawl into today, before you jump in that pot of water, why don’t you consider climbing instead into a posture of prayer and saturate yourself there, rather than the newscasts and the Facebook posts and the Tweets and snares of this life? You might find His presence more overwhelming than life itself, and, remember, He is sufficient enough to carry you and all that troubles you.

Come with me in March and let’s clean house!
If you are anything like me, you have kept some things around far too long and now they got to go! And with the Lord’s help, they can!