Thursday, December 13, 2007

There are times, like today, when I need to be reminded that God is in control. Times when I need to give my anxiety and fears over to God and allow myself to feel peace before I see Him do even one thing. Life is not perfect and there will be many times when I will be challenged to trust in a God who keeps His promises and never changes. I pray that today you are able to find peace in the midst of whatever situation you find yourself in. We are not alone. We have a big God who loves us beyond what we can comprehend. And we have each other, our God-given encouragers.


Rest In His Presence

And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.”
(Ex. 33:14, NASB)

When my youngest son was just 14 months old, there were times he would wake up in the middle of the night crying. When it was evident that he was not going to go back to sleep on his own, I would reluctantly pull myself out of my warm, cozy bed and sleepwalk down the hall to his room.

Now here’s the funny part …no matter how hard he was crying, he would instantly quiet the second I opened his door and walked into his room. Not only did he stop crying, but he immediately returned to sleep. Faster than I could snap my finger. And he stayed asleep while I fixed whatever the problem happened to be (which was often his blankets).

I always found this a little bit strange and somewhat amusing. And then it hit me that my son was able to do this because all it took was the sense of my presence to calm him. Before I did even one thing to help him, he had already found peace and rest simply by my being in the room. He knew he could trust me to take care of the problem once I was there.

As adults I don’t think most of us comprehend what it means to be given rest and peace in that way. We are part of a fast-paced, high-stress world of insomnia, anxiety, competition and depression. We don’t remember what it was like to find instant and total peace just by being in the presence of our parents.

I began comparing this to the parallels of the spiritual relationship we have with our Heavenly Father. Is just the fact of His presence enough to bring us peace, even before He does one thing to take care of our pressing needs? It rarely is, but it should be.

We all know the myriad of promises in the Bible about God caring about the smallest detail in our lives, about Him owning the cattle on a thousand hills, about Him doing “exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). Not only do we have these promises, but we also have our own experiences, those times in our past where we have seen God work in impossible situations in our lives.

We are promised that God will never leave us or forsake us. He is with us always. We need to learn – or perhaps re-learn – the art of finding rest simply because we are in the presence of our Father.