My best friend and I have been meeting weekly for accounatbility for the past nine years. Now we have had some weeks or even months where we have not been able to get together, but overall for the past nine years we have been pretty faithful to meet to catch up on what God is doing in our lives. Recently, both our husbands were gone for the night so she ended up just coming over to spend the night with me. We stayed up way too late talking just like back in high school...except that we still had to get up at 5:30am to get ready for our jobs! However, as we were sharing that night, we joked around about how neat it is that still after nine years of weekly meetings we are still able to talk for ten straight hours without running out of things to say! This is something I so value in this friend!!
However, the next morning as I was entering into my quiet time with the Lord, I began to wonder if the Lord might feel the same way about me. As I look back on the past eighteen years of my life that I have been a believer, I wonder if the Lord might feel like everytime we "get together" I am always talking and never running out of things to say. I stopped that morning to quiet my heart before the Lord and chose to just rest, allowing His presence to be enough for me. No words, no speech, no language. Just a child of God resting in the arms of her loving Creator. In Ecclesiastes 5:1, Solomon writes "Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know what they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few."
Scripture does speak to the value of bringing our burdens before the Lord, casting our requests at His throne, singing praises and telling those what He has done. Yet it can be so easy to get caught up in speaking all the time that we forget to go near to God just to listen. No other agenda or purpose or reason except to listen to what God might speak to our hearts. Today, let us choose to stop and simply breathe in who God is as we listen to what He desires to say to us!
