Be Still and Know that I Am God

 Guest post by Christine

“He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

When I am praying for others it is so very easy to trust and believe that God will do what He says and that I can rest in His promises to answer my prayers. But sometimes when hard things come into my own life I can so quickly lose my peace and rest. I know full well that the Lord is sovereign and that He is in control of everything and yet I doubt not that He can take care of the situation but if He will do it with the outcome that I want to see. I find myself fearful of the way He will answer my prayers. This is something that I just recently discovered about my own heart and the revelation was more than a little shocking.

This is even though I know that His way is the perfect way and that, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 (NIV).  I still find myself in fear what His way will be. Especially in regards to my children and those that are very close to me.

I praise the Father(our Abba Father) that He knows we are weak and loves us with a measureless love (that gave us His one and only begotten Son to die for our sins) and that He understands when we doubt. He allows us to go through things so that we will grow in the faith and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Sometimes we have to go through the same things over and over before we learn but He is always right there with us. He never leaves us or forsakes us and He is doing everything for our good and does exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works within us. Once we accept Jesus as our Savior we are filled with all the fullness of His grace and Spirit and we have all the power which that implies.

More often than not however we are consumed with the cares of the world and our selfish feelings and desires to let Him do a perfect work in us. He has to peel back the layers of the world and self like an onion to get us to see the greatness of His love and power in our lives. And all the while He knows what is best for us.

It reminds me of my son when he started school. He did not want to learn to read, write, or know his colors. He spent an hour fighting a five minute piece of homework. If we are honest we do the same thing to the Lord when we do not submit completely to His will. He wants to make our lives easier by teaching us fundamental peace and rest and we spend years fighting Him. I praise Him that He still loves us just like we love our own children, but no not just like, much, much more. He has much higher thoughts and plans for us than we could ever dream of.

My son is now twenty-one and has been in rebellion since he was about fifteen. He has done some things that I could have never imagined he could do. He has been arrested three times, the first time at seventeen. We live in a large city, one of the largest in the country, and at seventeen they go downtown not to juvenile. They do not get to place their call for help for several hours and as a parent you are left wondering if they are hurt or much worse. These have been some of the most frightening times of my life. I have been in the grips of fear to the point of feeling that my heart would literally burst. Sobbing and crying out to God in near hysteria were the results. And after getting him back home I became even more fearful. Every time I heard a siren my heart would stop and I would call, most of the times not getting an answer because he did not want to listen to me admonish him and he did not want to hear the fear in my voice. I was not listening to the Lord or helping my son.



I finally could not take the fear any longer and I cried out to the Lord and told Him that I needed His peace and I needed to release my son to Him. I was holding on to the control of my son and not trusting the Lord to do what was best for my son, even if what was best was jail. I did not want that to be an option.

The Lord helped me to realize that my son really did belong to Him and that if I really meant what I said when I prayed, that I wanted my son’s soul to be saved and that he would serve the Lord then I would have to let the Lord be in charge. It was only through the great grace of our Lord that I was able to release my son to Him and does that not sound foolish? Like I have any power to do anything for my son and I was not trusting God to do what it took to save him. I wanted the Lord to save him on my terms.

Now, I do believe that my precious, sweet Jesus spared me from so much more suffering because He has not allowed my son to be punished by jail thus far. He has warned him repeatedly and been so full of mercy. I praise God for His grace and I know that He woos us by His great grace more often than letting us suffer punishment when we all deserve it. He loves us so much and He gives us grace upon grace to draw us nearer to Him. He only wants our good as He tells us in the scripture shown above (Romans 8:28).

“For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” John 1:16 (NAS)

I am not telling you that I never experience fear now but when it surfaces I run to the Lord and ask Him for help immediately. I start singing praises to Him and thanking Him for the wonderful, glorious works that He is doing in my life and in the life of my son. We as flesh and blood have such a hard time believing what we do not see. The times when I do not see any evidence of the Lord working in my son’s life is when I ask Him for more faith and tell Him that I want to trust Him completely and then His peace comes, the peace that passes all understanding. There is no other peace like the peace of God, when His peace comes it is unexplainable to the world, it is in the midst of heartache, it is as if there is an invisible shield around our hearts and minds and you just know that God is in charge and there is nothing to fear. When you have experienced this there will never again be a doubt in your mind that God is real and how very much He loves us.

Author Bio:

This post is contributed by Christine Maddox. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree from University of Texas as well as blogging for www.4nannies.com. She loves to write anything related to parenting, kids, nanny care etc. She can be reached via email at: christine.4nannies @ gmail.com.



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