“Be still, and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10(a) (ESV)
Some have said that God has never spoken to them. Others have suggested that God’s speaking to the great ones of the Bible was necessary then, but that He doesn’t do that anymore.
Respectfully, I disagree. Of all the things the Bible demands of me, to “be still” is without doubt the most difficult of all. I want to “do something!” Not to sit and wait. But when I obey His word and I am still, I can listen. And I can hear. I think that the reason we don’t hear Him is that we don’t listen.
Another reason I believe that He still speaks to us is that He has clearly spoken to me twice in my life: once before I gave my life to Him; and once at the most difficult time in my life. I was 44 years old with a young family, a growing practice and seemingly all I wanted. Then I was told that I had a large mass on a kidney. I was to have a needle biopsy of that mass under CT. I was scared beyond measure. Solid masses on a kidney are almost always cancer. I was rolled into the CT suite on a gurney, shaking so badly from my anxiety that the nurse noticed. She reassured me that after she took a “scout” x-ray she would give me the pre-med IV to settle me. She went behind the barrier leaving me alone in the room. A clear voice spoke: “I have more for you to do. Don’t be afraid.” It was so real that my anxiety lifted immediately. So much so that when the nurse came back into the room, she asked me if she had already given the pre-med. I assured her, “No.”
Toward the end of Sally’s fight with brain cancer I was so frustrated. I am a man and a doctor. We are supposed to be able to “fix” things! I was helpless! I couldn’t do anything. I was driving alone and shouting at God. When I was quiet, I heard from the back seat a whisper, very clear, but a whisper. He said simply, “She’s in MY hands.” How powerful were those words. She was, indeed, in His mighty hands. Not mine.
I suggest that we all learn to listen, to be quiet. To be still, and to know that He is God.
