The words sit on a table in the office my husband and I share now that we both work at home. And no matter how many times I read them, they feel like a mystery to me:
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you. (1 Thess. 4:11)
I keep waiting to walk in one day and find an angelic sticky note that says, “Sorry, that sentence was a bit of a typo. What God really meant was…
Make it your ambition to change the world.
Make it your ambition to help everyone.
Make it your ambition to be perfect.
But every day when I come in those words are the same. And over time I’m slowly realizing maybe I’m the one who needs to change.
As someone who has found much of her worth in busyness, I’ve not appreciated the value of quiet. But God keeps drawing me deeper into a season with more silence and stillness.
I can relate to what Joanna Weaver shares in Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World:
While there are many things that need to be done, things I’m capable of doing and want to do, I am not always the one to do them….What’s more, I may be stealing someone else’s blessing when I assume I must do it all.
How I wish I would have learned earlier in ministry to wait upon the Lord. Much of my energy and joy has been swallowed up by jobs and obligations that were not my own. I still tend to rush in, presuming to know his will rather than waiting to hear what he desires.
It is a costly mistake, for often, when the Holy Spirit does ask something of me, I’m either knee deep in another project or too exhausted from my latest exercise in futility to do what God wants of me.
It’s in the quiet I can hear God whisper, “This is good but not My best for you.”
It’s in the quiet my soul is restored.
It’s in the quiet I learn life is more about being than doing.
Continue reading by joining me today over at (in)courage?
XOXO
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