“Still doesn’t mean stagnant.

Let that sink in.  

I’m talking to you.”

This is the little dialogue I’ve been having with the Lord lately.

You are deeply and significantly afraid of not making progress.  Success for you is measured in monumental accomplishments and captured moments in which everyone can say “look at you, look what you’ve done.” Because this is what you think when you see these moments from strangers and friends.  “Look at them, look what they’ve done”. A product of your generation, you are guilty of looking at the images splashed across your screens of new relationships, new homes, and new life with the disdain, bitterness, and ugly thoughts of jealousy screaming “Why can’t that be you?”.  

Then I am reminded:

“look at you, look what you’ve done”.  You’ve beaten the statistical odds and lost 146 pounds.  You’re 35 pounds away from your goal weight. You are working towards a Master’s degree to set you up to work in a career you are passionate about.  You recently cut your mile time in half. You work in an environment where you are daily encouraged, prayed for, and made to laugh. You have friends and family that love you.  Most days you manage to get from point A to point B with only minor incidence and trouble…usually of your own making, but you digress. You never wonder where your next meal is coming from and you sleep snuggled up in a warm bed next to 68 pounds of unconditional love in the form of your dream dog.  You know who are and most days even like who you are.

So why are you unhappy?  Because you forget. You forget these things that you have and have done, because you are actively looking at all that you don’t have and all that you have not done.  And the distance you feel from Me because of all the things I am telling you to, but you thus far have been unwilling to do. You are allowing the influence of the images you see on a screen to be stronger than the influence of the Lord’s presence and plan in your life.  Oh ye of little faith. You don’t have to be stagnant, but you do need to be still.

Isaiah 30:15: For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.

In desperation to no longer feel stagnant, you have looked to every sort of comfort: friends, food, validation, but what you’ve found is that these things were not the nourishment you needed to grow.  So stagnant you have remained. You have refused to be still and to look to Me for peace and guidance, instead, you have looked to your own understanding. All things I told you not to do. Remember?

Proverbs 3:5 ”Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

Micah 7:5 “Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide”…

Instead of being still and letting Me work in your life, to break and to build so that you would be made over stronger in My image, you decided to try and make yourself into the image you envisioned.  And how is that working out for you? Have you not noticed yet that when you allow Me to work in your life, the results are significantly better than when you try and operate alone?

This is not a direct transcription of the exact conversation I’ve been having with the Lord, but it is the overall message of it.  I have been fighting Him so hard lately knowing He has work for me to be doing, parts of His plan to fulfill, but in fighting His plan I am also preventing my own progress.  In refusing to be still and listen, to be still and let him carry me with His leadership, to be still and let Him work in my life, I am stuck like Jonah in a metaphorical belly of a whale, stagnant, and what is worse, I have put myself there.  I am looking at all the things I want to have, to be doing, and to be seeing in my life, when I should instead be looking for what the Lord wants me to have, wants me to be doing, and wants to see in my life. No wonder there is a disconnect, and I am the one standing there with scissors in my hand wondering who cut the cord between me and the Lord…meanwhile He’s standing there encouraging me to simply turn myself around and seek him.  Ready to forgive, ready to take back over. If I will just be still and let Him, to place my confidence back into Him and not those things of the world I seek out when fear and anxiety creep in. Instead of fight and flight, I need only to let His words sink…”Be still and know that I am God”. He has all power, all knowledge, and unconditional love…What else do you need?

Faith.  

Faith that his desire for stillness in you does not mean stagnation.  I realized a couple of years ago while trying to carry a rapidly growing golden doodle who was wiggling and struggling, that in order for him to get from one spot to the next with my help, he was going to have to be still.  That’s when it hit me, that’s what the Lord is probably constantly thinking about me. If you’d just be still, this whole process would go a lot easier and some progress could be made… So with this renewal of this realization, this conversation between the Lord and myself that’s been weeks in the making, and recognizing that what I am doing/not doing is the root of this stagnation I am feeling…I have decided to just be still and know that He is God.

My hope for you all is that you do the same.  That if you too have been feeling in a place of stagnation that you will be still and look for God to guide you and carry you.  That you will replace your expectations, desires, and plans for yourself with His desires, expectations, and plans He has for you instead.  I have a feeling that since I was lead to share this, I am likely not alone in this. So if anyone else is like me, remember, still doesn’t mean stagnant, He’s talking to us.  We just have to be still and listen, to be faithful and to allow His strength to carry us. Let that sink in.