This summer I had the chance to spend time at our cabin in the Catskills.  It’s a simple log cabin bordering 150 feet of trout stream.  I love to sit there on my green bench and just listen to the sounds of nature. A year ago, I stumbled upon the practice of stillness. I already engaged in silence and solitude, but I was tired physically, emotionally and spiritually because God had not answered my prayers the way I had wanted, so I stopped talking to Him. I had no more words to pray or to journal. Bible reading was like reading a foreign language, so I just came to sit in His presence.   I had grown weary of asking and waiting, so now I was just showing up.

During those times, I felt His nearness in very tangible ways, but refused His love because I knew I would have to relinquish my will and surrender to His way in everything.  I felt justified in my conclusions, so my heart remained closed to Him. Over time, His tenderness toward me prevailed and I realized I had nowhere else to go and because He had always been faithful in the past, He would again show Himself faithful. It was at this place on the journey, that I understood in a deeper way what is meant in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” The word for know in this verse is the Hebrew word yada.  In this context, know means ‘to intimately experience.’  In the stillness we are most challenged to intimately experience that He is God.   Our efforts, striving, and performance oftentimes give us the illusion that we know who God is and we are on task, helping to advance His kingdom.  Rather I have found that in the stillness I intimately experience that He is God and I am not.  He is in control, I am not.  He knows the plans He has for me and this campus and He will bring all those plans to fulfillment when the time is right.  This reminds me of Moses’s words to Israel in Exodus 14:14 as the Egyptians approached them at the Red Sea. “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.”

As our student leaders return in a few weeks to begin a new session of preparation for the school year, I want to emphasize the role of listening prayer in our lives.  We pray on our teams, prayer walk the campus and dorms to get ready for new students, and seek God for direction, but it is important to learn about waiting in God’s presence through silence, solitude and stillness.  Often when students hear about the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude, you will see a knowing nod and a look that comes across their faces that says, “Yeah, I’ve got that one down.  I know what it is to have a quiet time with God.”  But the area that I love to challenge them is in the place of stillness.  I call it the ‘8 Minute Stillness Challenge.’  I encourage them to sit in the presence of the Lord with no agenda.  During those eight minutes, they ask for nothing, say nothing, do nothing.  I even encourage them to set a timer and silence all electronics so they can concentrate.  For the extroverts and high D’s in the group, they are a bit unnerved that there is nothing outwardly measurable about the assignment.  If I had asked them to journal, they would have produced something.  If I had asked them to pray, they would have talked the entire time.  If I had assigned a certain number of chapters to read, they would have done it all, but to have ‘nothing’ to do in the presence of the Lord seems like a waste of time.

I have found that in the stillness, the heart is revealed. Jeremiah 17:9 reads, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?”  It is for this very reason that we often keep ourselves distracted so we will not have to be responsible for what we hear in the quietness of God’s presence.  It is not fun to find out what is in our heart, yet in the stillness “the kindness of God leads us to repentance (Rom 2:4), and all barriers can be removed to fulfill our longing for intimacy with Him.  Stillness reveals the frenetic energy of our hearts to want to prove our affection for God, thus earning His approval by our efforts.  Stillness removes all our futile attempts for earning love, because we’re not coming to do anything in His presence.  We come empty-handed and just show up to be with Him.  It is important that we teach our students to come to God by themselves, for themselves.  It is tempting for us to give them a quick fix answer, but “it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.  Let him sit alone in silence for the Lord has laid it on him.” (Lam 3:26-28)

As you encourage students to go to God alone in the stillness, you will have great follow-up conversations.  Many students repeatedly ask if they are doing it right because they just feel peace or love.  For others it opens up great discussion about spiritual instincts, hearing God’s voice and spiritual disciplines.  For others it stirs up desire to read great men and women of the faith who embrace the contemplative lifestyle. For others, just to be quiet and still is torture.

Let’s go through this school year practicing solitude, silence and stillness to intimately experience that He is God.  Are you up for the challenge?

[ BACK-TO-SCHOOL BLOGATHON HOMEPAGE ]

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Wanda Walborn will start her ninth year as Director of Spiritual Formation at Nyack College in Nyack, New York.  She also teaches such classes as Introduction to Spiritual Formation, Introduction to Women in Ministry and Developing a Woman’s Gifts and Calling.  Wanda can be reached at Wanda.Walborn@nyack.edu.