"Why did she jump again if she was hurt?" one of my
girls asked. I made some inane reply about the heart of a champion or Olympic
spirit, but in the back of my mind a thought was festering:
*She shouldn't have jumped again*
Our “indomitable human spirit” can sometimes get in the way
of doing the right thing. Sometimes the
right thing, the thing the Holy Spirit is telling us, is to stop. Maybe this is what happened with the Apostle
Paul when he said that the Spirit prevented him from going to Asia (Acts 16:6).
I wonder how often the Holy Spirit is telling us to stop and
we refuse to listen?
My friend is a good listener. For the past nine months she’s been telling
us that she felt like God was telling her to let someone else take her spot on
our church board, and that she needed to let someone else take the lead in our
children’s ministry. She said she felt
like God was preparing her for something else.
We didn’t really know what to think about that other than to say, “Ok,
whatever you think is best.” I know she
works pretty hard at listening to God, so I trusted along with her that God
would reveal the plan for her in due time.
Since then she’s found out that she has advanced stage cancer and her focus
now is on dealing with that. Not what we
hoped God was preparing her for, but her discernment was spot on.
The whole world has been learning the hard way about
stopping. We’ve had a year and a half of
pandemic shutdowns, and just when we think we’re done with it, the virus is
back with a vengeance. It’s been a tough
season of discernment for me. How much
stopping is enough or too much? What
needs to change and move forward? What
do I need to let go of?
Maybe the biggest theme through it all for me has been that
we don’t pray enough, and maybe more accurately we don’t pray deeply
enough. It’s hard to say what deeply
really means, but I think mostly it takes time.
Yesterday I was reading about prayer in the lovely book compiled by
Sarah Bessey, A Rhythm of Prayer, in which Winnie Verghese says:
These days when I pray, I send all
of my hopes and fears into the air over the Hudson River, trying to remain long
enough for the language of praise to come to me naturally.[1]
Trying to remain long enough is the challenge. How long is long enough? Long enough to get to
praise. Long enough to hear God and
respond. But instead, so often prayer is
that five-minutes-or-less thing we do because we’re supposed to before we move
on to the “really important” business.
These days it’s not the Holy Spirit that tells me to stop as
often as it is my body. If I sit too
long, my legs go to sleep or my back starts hurting. If I stand too long, other hurts happen. And I know that if I don’t pay attention, I’ll
be back where I was a few months ago, in bed unable to move at all. So I stop.
I’m not so much help around the house as I’d like to be since I still can’t
even lift the bag of trash out of the kitchen wastebasket when it’s full, but I
know what the consequences will be, so I stop.
God tried to help us get the hang of stopping by giving us a
sabbath every seven days. We have
varying understandings of how to do that. Since I’m a pastor, I help others
observe the sabbath on Sunday, but take my own sabbath on Monday. It’s tempting to make that a get-‘er-done
day, but my husband is good at reminding me that rest is my job on sabbath
days. He’s seen what happens to my
stress levels when I don’t have a chill day, and he’s seen what happens to my
physical well-being when the stress levels are too high for too long.
God is often telling us to stop. Psalm 41:10 is a great go-to
stopping verse: “Be still and know that I am God.” There’s another stopping verse in the story
in which Israel was escaping from Egypt and running away from the Egyptian army.
Moses told them, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still”
(Exodus 14:14).
Centuries later, when Judah was about to be invaded, King
Jehoshaphat led the people in prayer, and the prophet Jehaziel told them, ”Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this
great horde, for the battle is not yours but God's.’” So instead of fighting, they went out
singing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” When they
got to the battleground, they found the enemy was already dead (2 Chronicles
20). They never had to fight at all. Good thing they stopped instead of running
out to fight.
Hearing God is
such an individual thing that it’s hard to help people know when to go and when
to stop. For myself, I’ve learned the hard way that if I wait and listen, God
will let me know when to go. And if I go
ahead without waiting, I’ll usually see at some point that I jumped the gun and
should have waited.
On the other
hand, praying about things with a group can be quite fruitful sometimes, as the
Holy Spirit whispers are heard by at least one person, and often confirmed by another.
Knowing when to
stop is an age-old question. Maybe The
Clash put it best in their classic song:
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know . . .
Should I stay or should I go?[2]
[2] https://genius.com/The-clash-should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-lyrics#about
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