Our guest post comes from a friend, Patty Johnson, a ministry wife I’ve been getting to know through Facebook after we met a few years ago at a biblical counseling class in Michigan. I’ve had the pleasure of watching (through social media) God care for her and her family through some pretty big changes and the spiritual growth she’s shown publicly as a result of their trials and life changes.

She’s been a blessing to me: I hope her words below bless you to, sweet girl. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Everyone in 2020 has faced unique challenges. It has been a year of disappointment, loss, frustration, confusion, and unrest, just to name a few.

The last time we had a catastrophic event that touched the entire world, was quite possibly the flood. After the flood families were established, people started to re-build then the Tower of Babel happened. That event single handedly divided humanity into races, culture, religions, languages, etc.

Now here we sit in 2020 thinking what is going to come next? We have lived without toilet paper, we use hand sanitizer religiously, shaking hands is quickly becoming a memory, and masks are now a fashion statement! Our lives are forever altered.

Oh, how our hearts have longed for peace! The running joke is “What will each new month in 2020 bring?”. We just want it to be over! We would love to be done with all this craziness wouldn’t we? But it is still October… So, what can we do to get through the next few months?

I want to share with you a secret I learned during the hardest time of my life. One morning I was reading my Bible and I came to this verse:
Psalm 4:4 Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

Let’s take the next few moments and unpack the truths of this verse:

“Stand in awe.” What does it mean to stand in awe? Awe is wonder. We experience awesome moments in our life! One for me was standing at Clingman’s Dome in Tennessee and looking out over the rolling mountains as far as my eye would compute and realizing how small I was compared to the vastness of it. God’s creation gives us many chances to stand in awe.

God wants us to stand in awe of Him! He wants to awe us by His character, His names, His ability, etc. God loves to see us as His children respond to Him in awe and as a result worship Him. He wants us to be aware of Him and see Him in everything we do. God has so much for us throughout our day that we miss because we miss the first part of our day standing in awe of Him!

Without a daily time in our Bible we will never be fully aware of the “awe moments” God provides throughout our day. The Psalmist said in Psalm 63:1 O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my should thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. God wants us to seek Him early: early in our day, early in our life, and early in our problem!

Reading our Bible, studying it, meditating on it, are all habits God has commanded us to do. The problem is we don’t want to! When you find this happening and it will, just be honest with God! Tell Him you don’t want to and ask Him to help your “want to”! Then pick and time and a place you plan on meeting with God. Have a journal or a notebook handy. If you want more information please feel free to contact me at joshsrib@icloud.com and I would be happy to pass on some resources!

“Sin Not” is the next part of this verse. If we are to live a holy, sinless life, we need to know what the Bible says about sin! II Peter 1:3-9 tells us that God has given us everything to live a godly life! How is a person supposed to know how to live a godly life? By reading God’s Word of course.

Repeatedly in God’s Word we see that we are commanded to make God’s Word part of our day! Deuteronomy 6 tells us to talk of it with our children as we walk and talk, sit and eat, when we arise and when we go to bed. Timothy admonished us to study God’s Word. The Psalmist exhorts us to meditate on God’s Word.

Timothy also told us that ALL scripture is given for doctrine (what is right), reproof (what is wrong), correction (how to get right), and instruction in righteousness (how to stay right). But we must be reading God’s Word to learn what God says about sin and how to avoid it! Say to your heart truth. The third thing we see in this verse is the necessity to say truth to our heart.

We are so bombarded by lies through advertising, opinions, social media, etc. Everywhere we turn we are faced with different lies of the Devil and the World!

We must cling to the truths of God’s Word! Truly, we live in a day where we are told to do what is right in our own eyes. “You do you,” is a slogan of our generation. We are taught to forsake the truth for what “feels” good.

Truth comes from God and God never changes! Jesus said “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.” Jesus also said He was the same yesterday, today and forever. As our world changes, we can rest in the truth that God’s Word never does! The only way to combat the lies we face and the lies we tell ourselves is to replace them with the Truth of God’s Word!

Surrender. We so want that “be still” part of the verse! Oh, how we long for peace! But the only way to be still is to surrender. Long before we ever get to the peaceful part we must spend time standing in awe of our great Lord and Savior Jesus. We need to sin not and replace lies with the truth of God’s Word.

These three steps are vital if we are ever to get to the point where we can be still. When we stand in awe of God, we become aware of His greatness and that should cause our hearts to want to be still.

What in your life do you need to surrender to God so He can help you be still? What are you holding on to that God wants you to give to Him so He can quiet your heart and life? If we have taken the first step of standing in awe of God it makes this step so much easier!

So what about you? Maybe you have never really stood in awe of God daily. What sin do you have in your life that you need to confess and repent of? Confess it to God and seek help. What area of your life do you need to surrender to God so you can be still? Write out this statement: “Because of what I learned I will . . .” and then act upon the decision God is leading you to make!

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I tell my teen group girls often that if they’re the same person they are today that they were a year ago, then they are not growing closer to Jesus. The closer we get to Jesus (through forsaking sin & choosing faith in God’s timing and plans), the more like Him we should grow.