"Please. Be Quiet."

"But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need."  I Thess 4: 10-12

Be ambitious to be quiet? Sounds like 'striving for peace'!

Some translations say "study to be quiet".  I know something about that.  I have been in a long, quiet season---working along the way, tending to my own business and not needing recognition. 

It has been one of the most beneficial soul exercises I have ever done.

I needed to die to the need of recognition that religion can train us to expect.  I love encouragement, but I don’t need praise.  I want to share the testimonies of God, but I don’t need any particular reputation.  I love this quiet place.  God and I have secrets.  I don’t tell everything He does in me and through me. There is a time for testimony and there is a time for intimacy and trust in another way.

Now I find that when the Lord nudges me to ‘step out over here...’ my answer has been, ‘But I really like this hidden place!’

Being quiet is so much more than 'not talking'. 

For me, it started with talking less but ended up being much, much more.  For instance, I could be in a situation where my mind would spin off several things I could say—and I would CHOOSE to ‘hold my peace’—praying, instead.  Sure, sometimes I would share—but NOTHING like I had done before.

Little by little, I noticed my heart was not striving and was actually content to be…quiet.

I had been driven by the need to be known. The need to be understood. The need to be right? (yuk)  Lots of yukky undercurrents there that were only to be curbed by being radically shut down.

By practicing quietness, I learned I had been doing a LOT of talking.  What my soul REALLY craved was quiet—but I didn’t know it until I was there. 

There. Where He leads beside still waters.  And restores our soul.  There.  The Shepherd took me there.

It feels so good to be able to REST.  For the past several months, I have not needed a sleep aid to rest during the night—for the first time in 16 years!!

Is God leading you to a journey of rest for your soul?

           
                Life is the survival of the RESTED.

1 Chronicles 4: 40  “They found rich, good pasture, and the land was spacious, peaceful and quiet.”

Job 6: 24 “Teach me, and I will be quiet; show me where I have been wrong.”

Psalm 23: 2  “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters; He restores my soul.”

Psalm 131: 2  “But I have calmed and quieted myself; I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child, I am content."

Isaiah 32: 17  “The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.”

Lamentation 3: 26  “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”