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There are five things that are essential to build and grow our faith. Trust and remembering are the first two. The third faith builder is a spiritual practice that has been essential to my faith and relationship with Jesus: Stillness.
It is difficult to find time to be silent and still in the age of technology. Statistics show that the average person or group can only bear 15 minutes of silence. Stillness challenges our addiction to busyness, amusement, and noise.
Silence and stillness are difficult because we are easily distracted. Silence asks for patience and waiting, and patience and waiting makes us uncomfortable. We feel unproductive and sometimes emotions or thoughts surface for us that we would rather consciously or unconsciously avoid by being busy and not being still.
If I am honest, sometimes it can be easier to scroll through Facebook or Instagram than to spend that time in stillness with God.
Psalm 23:1-3b
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.
Notice the still waters.
God invites us to take time to be still and experience his presence, his delight, his restoration, his refreshment. To come into his presence with no agenda other than the desire to delight in his presence as he delights in us. Not consuming more information but being consumed with the presence of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit.A lot of religions practice silence but what makes us unique as followers of Jesus is that we come and we are silent before the Lord himself. Our aim is not to empty ourselves as a form of self-actualization but to grow in our realization of our experience of the presence of Jesus.
Henry Nouwen, well known theologian says, “Silence is the furnace of transformation”
And Jan Winebrenner states, “The discipline of stillness, when exercised in faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit, will always yield fruit.”
Take time to be still before Jesus this week. Replace time in social media with a few minutes of settling into stillness and silence, allowing thankfulness to bubble up in you. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you center your mind and heart on him. When practiced in faith your life will be transformed and you will bear fruit.