This past weekend at Second Story Church, we read a story about the prophet Elijah from 1Kings 19 where Elijah… let’s just say he was a little burnt out. God’s answer for Elijah’s burnout wasn’t found in anything spectacular. It was found in what the Bible calls a “thin whisper” in Elijah’s silence before Him.
And that got me thinking: How do we be silent in God’s presence in a world that’s addicted to noise? Who benefits from silence? Let me give you just one person who benefit when you and I dare to do what our world encourages us not to – and that’s actually be quiet, still, and silent.
Stillness and silence helps us be present with OURSELVES.
One of the first people to benefit when we learn to be still and silent is US! When you break your routine of noise and the addiction most of us have to constant distraction, you actually have a chance to listen to what’s going on inside of you.
The NBA playoffs started this weekend, and I have high hopes for my Boston Celtics this year. But I discovered a new trick this season for watching Celtics games without getting nervous for them while they’re playing. When things aren’t going well and the Celtics are playing on the road in a hostile arena, and the momentum is against them and they can’t buy a bucket – you know what I do? It’s kind of ridiculous, but I promise you it works: I watch the game on mute. I watch it in silence. Why?!
I don’t need to listen to an opposing crowd cheering for everything I don’t want to happen! I don’t need to listen to their stupid celebration when things are going wrong! I don’t need announcers nitpicking everything the Celtics are doing and pointing out everything they’re screwing up! I’ve got eyes! I can see that for myself! So Doris Burke, Stan VanGundy, and anyone else who’s commentating on the game, in the name of Jesus, if you can’t tell me something about how we’re going to dig ourselves out of this hole we’re in, I don’t want to hear it! It’s making me nervous! It’s making me anxious! I don’t need that mess in my ears right now! I just mute the TV and it’s incredible how much anxiety goes away! I can watch even the hard things and see them for what they are and evaluate them without all the noise of a crowd that’s cheering against me and announcers who have nothing good to say. I might even play some spa music underneath the action just to keep myself calm while I watch.
You want the truth? Some of us, that’s all we’ve got on our anxiety and insecurity right now – crowds cheering for all the wrong stuff and announcers who are nitpicking everything apart all the time. This is why athletes delete social media when the playoffs start – I don’t need all that negativity and pressure on top of the pressure I’m already under and the anxiety I feel – I need my coach, I need my teammates, and I need my family, and that’s it!
Silence and stillness help me to mute what swirls around in my heart and mind so I can see things more clearly and realize what’s happening inside me. In Psalm 131:1-2, David wrote: Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
David is saying that calming and quieting yourself is what mature people do so they can be in tune with themselves through silence and stillness – getting to know what’s really going on with them without the added momentum of anxiety that all the noise brings. It’s a mark of maturity to press mute. Noise and distraction are a mark of immaturity. See – that’s the thing – when I say that silence and stillness are ways to be present with yourself so you can be alert to what’s in you – I’m assuming you actually want to know. A lot of us would rather not know. We’re pretty scared of what bubbles up in us when we get still and quiet. That’s when the insecurity comes up that we hide underneath our workaholism and our workout plan. That’s when the insecurity and loneliness comes up that we hide under a social calendar that we’d fill every evening if we could.
You can’t fight the clutter of noise within you by creating more noise around you. Fighting noise that way is a never-ending battle in which eventually you won’t be able to hear, discern, or recognize anything – it’s all just going to be noise – and it’s going to get louder and louder and louder. So you’re actually way better off learning to sit in stillness and silence so you can deal with the noise WITHIN you, partner with God on weeding through that – what’s healthy? What isn’t? – so you can deal with the noise AROUND YOU in a non-anxious way. Stillness and silence helps you better know you.
Proverbs 10:19 says, “Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.” This is the Bible literally telling some of us that the reason we’re sinning, the reason we’re missing the mark, the reason we’re experiencing pain, the reason we’re repeating the pattern, the reason we can’t unlock the next level is because we will not shut up long enough to listen to Him. If you want a better relationship with yourself, others, or with God – you need to learn to be still and silent so you can listen in a non-anxious way and carry His peace to the world around you.