Be Still, and Be Chased

Space.

Finally, I exhaled.

It’s something my heart had been longing for, as I’ve been practicing the running again. Traveling here, traveling there. Seeing people. It was my off season, so I had the time. And it was just like me to fill my time to the brim. I filled it with good things, good people, good activities.

But what about God? Was I filling it with Him?

We want space to see His glory, and yet we fill our time with more of ourselves. Our agendas. Our desires.

Awe of Him comes in space and space – and that’s something I often don’t create.

But after a week filled with the people I love, I felt exhausted from not spending time with the Lord intentionally. Exhausted not refreshing my soul with Him in the morning. I needed His glory, more desperately than I realized. Needed it like my lungs needed oxygen.

So that day, I was driving down the highway, to my next destination, and finally, I exhaled. And I saw Him.

Saw Him as I winded around the vast mountains around me. I felt small in creation, returned to the size I was made to be. I was moving in a car, yes, but something inside me stopped moving.

What does it take to make you still?

That day, it was my desperation that made me still. I was soul weary. And all the things I have filled my life with, filled my time with – hadn’t met the hunger in my heart. It was still there. It burned like a flame within me.

When we let Him, Jesus always shows Himself to our hearts. It’s when we stop our own chase that we realize that He is chasing us.

We need Him to chase us.

Because stopping our own chase and being still can be hard.

It may mean letting go of our own selfishness. For me, I know God asks me to let go of thinking of myself. Of chasing the life that I want. Even if it’s the life I feel God has promised me, I can chase it and ask God to follow me there.

This verse in Romans 8 always touches my heart, it’s a check to see where my thoughts are – and who is driving my life:

“Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what He is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored. But if God Himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than Him…when God lives and breathes in you, you are delivered from that dead life.”

Romans 8:5-9 MSG

We need to be delivered from ourselves. It’s thinking of God that saves us. It’s focusing on His work that frees us.

It’s popular right now to talk about #allthethings. All the things we have to do. All the things that are beckoning us. All the things that we are facing at any given time. The truth is, when we focus on all these things, we are choosing to glorify things over God.

When our God is bigger than all the things we face. When our God is working in and through and above and behind all these things. A.W. Tozer says,

“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.”

Gazing upon God’s face is what our soul needs. Our souls need to still and see Him, like our lungs need oxygen. We need to become less and let Him become greater.

Because we weren’t made to be great. We were made to let Him be great in us. And it’s only in the posture of worship that we see who we are, and we see who He is. We see a small glimpse of His glory and His greatness.

He became greater in my heart that day in the car, winding through the towering mountains. He became greater as I stood on the beach at sunset last week as the sun glimmered upon the horizon.

And He becomes greater every time I’m driving in the car and exhale at the way the sun is shining. He becomes greater when I notice tulips stretching toward the sun on the kitchen table.

He becomes greater when I think not about the difficulties in a situation but upon His grace, and how it met me there unexpectedly.

He becomes greater when I thank Him for what He’s giving me today.

He becomes greater when I realize He is God. He is my God. He is your God.

When we still and let go of chasing the life we want, we can let Him chase us with the life He gives. Every moment of every day, He gives. He gives the only life we’ve ever really needed.

He gives us hope. He gives us life. He gives us healing. He gives us wholeness. He gives us rest. He gives us peace. He gives us joy. He gives us Himself. And this, girls, is what fills our heart with awe and wonder. Our Jesus, always chasing us with His love.

 

“Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.”

– Psalm 23:6 (MSG)