“BE STILL AND KNOW.”
BY B.G. HAWORTH.
Be still and know
that I am God… I will be exalted in the earth. –Psa. xlvi:10.
“Be still and
know.” The words are so familiar! The whole Psalm is so old to all of us, we
almost cease to pause over it; and just as we are coming to the end once more,
and it may be are going on to something else, God stops us- “Be still!”
How often in the
rush of our life has that word come to us! Sometimes we have heeded it, and
sometimes we have let it pass; it has come, nevertheless-come as the almighty
word of an Omnipotent God, clothed with the power of peace. But we have not
given it a hearing, and we have been losers thereby; for when God says, “Be
still,” He has something to tell us, and we cannot hear till we are still. For
God does not speak-He cannot speak-to a restless soul, nor to an impatient
soul, nor to a speaking soul. I do not mean He says nothing. A word of
command can be heard in much tumult, and above many voices where it would be
impossible to hold a conversation; but God cannot commune with such souls.
So a word of
command comes first-“Be still.” We have not got to hush ourselves into rest, or
patience, or silence; do not let us attempt it; it needs all the power of His
word to do it. But that word, that power, is enough, and it is here; accept it;
let it have sway over your being; let it rule the sea of your soul as it ruled
the deep of Genesaret. Let it be to you a reality-the living word of a Living
God-true to-day, as it was true in yesterday of the age. “Be still,” He said,
and the storm became a calm, is chronicled of the Past. “Be still!” He cries,
and the waters of our live cease to leap, may be the record of the Present. Why
is not always? The fault is not on His side, but we do not yield to the power
of the word. The natural creation, having no will, obeyed and submitted to the
will of Him Who spake, and all was peace; the spiritual creation, to whom is
given the liberty, the responsibility, of choice, resists the will of Him Who
speaks. He is “the same;” but we yield not; and yet He speaks-He, the
patient waiting Lord- speaks yet again, “Be still.” He has something to
say to us, oh! How “many things,” if we would only hear Him.
He wants a listening
people. Just as patient waiting is more than being stilled (it is stillness
in continuance), so with “ears attent” is more than simply waiting: it is
stillness with a purpose. He means all this when He says “Be still.” He means
be quiet, stay quiet, harken.
Hearken! We say,
“Oh! I pray, and pray, and pray, and I never get any answers.” And God says,
“When I spake, ye did not hear.” If God is right, then we are in the wrong, and
our God is not guilty. We have not given Him time to answer us. We have spoken,
and wpoken, and spoken; poured out our soul before Him-perhaps by the hour
together-and He has listened and heard everything; and then, when we have had
our say, we have not waited five minutes-not five moments-to hear anything He
might have to say to us, and we complain we “never get any answers.” “I spake,”
He says, “but ye did not hear.” No; we have gone about our business, our
pleasure, forgetting that every prayer is as a knock at His door, and when He
has opened to us we are no longer there… “Be still and know.” It is not
for nothing. We shall not know much till we are still, and we shall not be
still long without knowing a little. But “how can I know?” we ask. “Even when
HE does speak, how can I know that it is His voice?” How can we know? I
think such a question wounds the Lord, perhaps unconsciously to ourselves. He
has been so much with us, spoken so often; He is hurt and His Father’s heart is
grieved when we begin to as “How?”
“Have I been so
long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me?” “Wherefore is it
that thou dost ask after My name?” He says, “I am broken” (Ex. vi: 9). Is it
wonderful? If we are true, loyal to Him, will not He be true to us? Is
not His very name as Father pledge enough? If He says, “Do My will,” and our
hearts respond, “Teach me what it is,” will He not reach us? Will He not do it
in a language we can comprehend-in a voice we can hear? But we are not always
true to Him. That is the point. There is a reserve in the depths of our heart,
a reserve of obedience, a reserve of service, perhaps a reserve of care; and we
know we shrink from knowing just what His will is, lest it touch those things,
and we cannot hear His voice clearly. Do your own will for five minutes, and it
will be difficult to find out His will the whole day, perhaps. And why? There
has been disloyalty to Him. The breach is healed at once, I know; but you are
all ruffled, unbalanced; for you have lost your true center, when your will
took the throne of His; and the troubled waters have to be stilled into
quietness before you can hear-to know. The “Be still” of Jehovah must
enter the deep places, and calm the restless willfulness of will in its hidden
depths, if the knowing is to be continual, progressive…
“Know that I AM,”
that “I exist,” the TO BE of the world’s existence, spiritual, natural,
individual; the Essence, the Source of all Life, the living One, the Acting
One, the Changeless One, from all Eternity, “Which IS, Which was and Which is
to come.” We act as though He were not, we speak as though He heard not,
and He says, “Know that I AM,” not only that I have been; many of us believe
that; not only that I shall be; we believe that also; but that I am, the Same
to-day as yesterday and forever. A God Who deals and may be dealt with TO-Day a
Person, A Reality. Let us know it, believe it, prove it, in our approaches to
Him, in our transactions with Him; in our lives, lived in the power and
presence of the Eternal “I Am.”
If we believed it
the whole world would know something of it. For I am “for you,” and who can be
against you? I am “With you,” and who may withstand you? So far, the record of
the Old Dispensation; now in closer relationship and more vital union He says,
I am “in you,” thus garrisoned outside and in by Himself whose name is JEHOVAH,
“know that I am God,” that I AM His ALL, enfolded in His name. Is the scroll
opening, and we are beginning to read, to decipher the characters to understand
a little that He is what He is-Jehovah, Jesus, All-Power, All-Love, and this
“for. Ever.” But to know it! The promise is, “They shall all KNOW ME,
from the least of them unto the greatest.” There is a day coming when “we shall
know even as also we are known.” This is the consummation, yet it is linked
with a present responsibility. “Then shall we know IF we follow on to
know the Lord,” to understand His thoughts, to enter into His mind, to
be one with Him to-day, NOW, while He is not understood, and while He is
misrepresented, now in the day of the hiding of His Majesty, that so we may be
one with Him in the day when His Glory shall be revealed.
London, Eng.
