Whoa Nelly.

I just realized after that post it was the first night in like three or four weeks when I didn't have to go anywhere or do anything in the evening. Terri looked at me yesterday and she said she didn't know how I did it. I looked at her through exhausted eyes and said that I didn't know either.

So here's a devotional that I wrote this week on Psalm 46:10--

"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."

This is a portion of a beautiful psalm that reminds us that although trouble and calamity will indeed come, our God is able to offer both help and deliverance. Be it a natural disaster, political turmoil, or the anxious human heart, we find that God's sovereignty transcends the situations mentioned the the rest of this psalm.

It seems that God's Word has once again pegged the human condition. The other day I was answering my work phone while typing an email and trying to text someone all at once. (It didn't work and of course I got uber-confused: glad I didn't try to stand on my head too....) I gotta tell you that it's really hard to hear the voice of God while trying to do all that.

Here's the thing: a lot of us can't be still and know that He is God because we are too busy striving to please Him, filling our moments with "good things" to make God happy and proud of us, when all He really wants is our undivided attention (Psalm 86:11). The work has been completed. We can't add to Jesus' sacrifice to make us more holy. Filling our days with trying to please others and trying to do good doesn't impress God. My friend once wrote a journal about her struggles to fill her days with things that she felt would help her earn his favor, but if she would have been still, she would have discovered that she already had it as His daughter. She didn't need to jump through more hoops. God spoke these words to her heart:

"Stop striving. Don't strive. DO NOT STRIVE."

If we are never still enough, we will never be able to hear Him tell us that we don't have to earn His love with good deeds. Sometimes those good deeds keep us away from knowing Jesus better. Which makes our efforts null anyway.

I want you to be encouraged because God knows your heart. Maybe you long to stop striving just as I do. I encourage you to memorize this verse and tuck it into your heart to pull out as you feel yourself missing the point and trying to add to the work on the cross.