Happy New Year!
On New Year's Day I was dwelling on the uncomfortable idea of stillness. By stillness I mean that state/feeling/thing that we normally and even unconsciously try to avoid experiencing by occupying our lives and time with anything else we can. More on that later. As I was dwelling on the idea, I decided to search out the scriptures to see if I could find anything relevant to the issue. As I am writing this I cannot seem to retrace my steps in any understandable way to find out how I arrived where I did, but I somehow found myself reading Isaiah 30:15. As I read the passage, I was blown away by what it said. It reads...
“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”(Isaiah 30:15 NIV)
This verse has been engraved in my thoughts ever since I read it. I have spent the past several days deeply praying and meditating over the meaning of this passage, and it has become to me an unexpected, yet welcome banner for me to carry into this new year. The impact that this little known passage of scripture has had on me leads me to think that it bears sharing. It is my hope that through the power of his living Word that perhaps God may speak to you as he has spoken to me.
“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:”
This introduction shows that the prophet Isaiah is directly quoting the words of God revealed to him. It goes without saying that what follows next should probably be paid extra attention to…
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,”
Here’s where it gets interesting. God is saying that repentance or as other translations say returning(meaning to him), is our salvation. Repentance = Salvation. That may be the greatest news ever, but there’s probably minimal shock value and little new to us there.
However, he goes on to say that rest also is part of our salvation. This is where I start to have a problem what God is saying here. When it comes to resting, I normally operate on the polar extreme of rest, whatever you want to call that. So maybe you’re like me and can’t handle too much rest, or maybe resting comes to you naturally. Maybe you just have a hard time doing nothing, or maybe are terrified of the silence found in stillness. Regardless, I believe that we all struggle with resting in our own degrees and for our own reasons but it something that God commands us to do--and for good reason!
God is calling us to rest in him. To rest from work (Sabbath). To rest from trying to work our way to salvation. We know that works cannot save us but we buy into the lie that they do anyway! God says, “No! Stop working to save yourselves and simply repent and rest in me. I will save you.” Our salvation is found through repentance and resting in our Maker, not in our unrighteous or even our righteous laborings. Salvation is found when we simply repent and rest in him.
“in quietness and trust is your strength,”
I don’t know about you, but my natural inclination is not to associate quietness with strength, trust maybe, but not quietness. By quietness, I do not mean a lack of physical vibration of air molecules so much as I mean a quietness of the heart. I have wondered what is behind the constant drive to keep ourselves so obsessively busy and avoid the inner quietness. We are so quick to fill the quietness with anything that we can get out hands on--tv, texting, facebook, friends, hobbies, etc… These aren’t even bad things but they all serve the function of keeping us occupied. We will do almost anything to circumvent facing the quietness of our own soul. There are probably many valid reasons for why we do this, but I think that one of the primary reasons is that we are afraid.
Here is where that idea of uncomfortable stillness that I spoke of earlier comes in. I think that we may be afraid to be still and embrace the quietness. Why? That’s probably a question that is best answered individually between you and God. I know that for me it has a lot to do with fear of my own heart. I am afraid to face the quietness of my soul alone because even though I know that God resides in my heart, I am terrified of what I may find should I look inside and God not be there to save me from myself.
But then I realized something powerful. God loves us. He doesn’t love the masquerade of ourselves that we outwardly display. He loves who we are at our deepest level, the level that we can be so afraid to even look at. THAT’S who he loves. That is why he says to us, “Be still and know that I am God.”(Psalm 46:10 ESV). God is not afraid to see us raw, exposed, dirty, and naked, and still loves us. So why should we be afraid to see and love ourselves in the same way? We can embrace our innermost self with confidence that God will do the same. There is no need to hide it in shame. Now, looking at quietness in that way, we can begin to see how it leads to strength.
The word trust in this passage can also be translated as confidence. It is in that confident trust in the Lord God that we are secure, and it is in trusting him with our innermost self that we find our strength.
In conclusion...
Repent, rest, and be saved.
Embrace, trust, and be strong.
And lastly, let's do what the nation of Israel should have done and instead of "having none of it" let's be willing to head the voice of our Sovereign Lord and see how doing so can change both us and the world.
Blessings
-Josh
P.s... Happy Birthday J.R.R. Tolkien!
