The Religious Nerd

A friend of mine put together an amazing post on Facebook and I asked him if it was OK if I could share it here on my blog.  I was both challenged and encouraged by his post and I think you will be too.  It is especially relevant this week before Christmas.  May we all be still, and know that He is God!

“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10a  written by Paul Krutskikh

It is that time of year again, the holiday season. Seemingly our world begins to revolve faster as the days get shorter and we become busier as we plan and prepare our holiday ideas. We start having meetings to plan and organize the big Christmas and New Year’s parties, and begin to do our Christmas shopping (unless you begin super early or are a last minute shopper). We start sending out holiday cards, and try to get out of having to get together with family or friends that we love but don’t like to hang out with because they’re weird. And in all of this running around I wonder if we be start missing the point to this time of year, a time that we normally say is to give thanks and celebrate the birth of our savior, the greatest gift this world has ever known. None of the things mentioned above is really a bad thing in, and of themselves, but they can quickly become a distraction, and detraction from doing what is most important; enjoying God in the person of Jesus Christ. We have so commercialized the holidays and what both Thanksgiving and Christmas represent, that we seemingly miss the point of them entirely.

And this is where “Be still, and know that I am God.” comes to mind. It is that halting everything to behold the attributes, being, and character of God. It is the stopping of our worries to meditate on the great promises and perfections of Christ and submitting ourselves to his will. As I look around and see the materialism and pervasiveness of the desire to acquire more goods, especially among professing Christians, I turn away in disgust and sorrow. We laugh at the foolish people in the bible who made idols out of clay, wood, or metal and worshiped them. How could someone stoop so low? The sad truth is we do the same. We spend our lives working for money and then sacrificing the result of our labor to buy toys of various kinds to feed our wants for pleasure and feed our pride in owning stuff. We waste immense amounts of time and money on foolish entertainment, as we bow to our idols of comfort and self- centeredness. And it is because we don’t know God. We don’t believe what he says about himself and we don’t believe his promises. We desperately seek satisfaction and pleasure, but sadly, it is in all the wrong places.

We never stop to ponder on who God is; we don’t seek intimate fellowship with him and because of that we think he is boring and fail to tap into the immense, deep satisfaction that can be found in Christ alone. We don’t experience the joy, satisfaction, and pleasure that is in Christ (Ps.16:11), and don’t answer God’s call to be satisfied in him (Isaiah 55:1-2), because we fail to stop and “be still”. It is a shame to see believers (supposedly reconciled to God) look for satisfaction elsewhere rather than recognizing he is the source of all true satisfaction. I pity those people, because though we all struggle with temptation and the lure of sin, they are seemingly oblivious to the foolishness of their strivings and the joy that they are passing up.

Don’t allow the notion of life being performance and possession driven, as is evidenced in the American culture, to stop you from taking time to bask in the greatness of our God. It is only in our being still and beholding his beauty will our strivings for vain satisfaction cease, and true joy will fill our life. It is only in knowing and resting in the character of God will our longings for safety and security finally come to rest. And it is only in becoming still will we be able to hear and respond to the beautiful truths spoken in Isaiah 55:2. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”

God bless Paul for taking the time to put this post together. I know it encouraged me to rethink what Christmas time is really about and I hope it has encouraged you too.