BE STILL

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire.  Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” – Psalms 46:10

It’s funny how God can take a memory and bring it to mind with a verse that seems absurdly separate in meaning.  This morning in my time with Him He brought to mind the three rules of the Genie in the movie Aladdin.  I know them by heart, thanks to two small children that could watch the movie day after day without blinking an eye while it was playing. 

The three rules of the Genie were:

1. He couldn’t kill anybody.
2. He couldn’t make anybody fall in love with anybody else.
3. He couldn’t bring people back from the dead.

(The video is below if you want to hear it in the words of the Genie, Robin Williams, as I did.)

As human beings, we have an innate nature to try to control things, to step in and fix things – even if they’re not broken sometimes!  As Christians, we feel like we have to always be DOERS of the word.  Yet there is a time that we should just BE STILL, as God tells us in Psalms 46:10.  There are times that things are out of our control.  In those times we are dependent on God to fix them. 

One of those times is when you love someone and you just cannot understand why the love isn’t returned.  Another is when you want to choke the living daylights out of someone, and just like the Genie, you can’t kill nobody…and you shouldn’t want to.  The other is when you want so badly to have that one more conversation with someone who has passed away. 

These are all heart problems, and nothing we can do can change a heart – not even our own.  You can’t make someone love you, you can’t stop loving someone even when they’re gone, and sometimes, you just can’t find the way to forgive and turn off the anger you feel toward someone. 

But God can.  With God nothing is impossible (Matthew 19:26).  God can create a clean heart inside a person (Ezekiel 36:26), and it is okay to ask Him to do that (Psalms 51:10). 

Psalms 46:10 says that He makes wars come to an end.  When we hear the word “war” we usually perceive it to be between nations.  But a war can occur on a much smaller level, in a family, in a job, or even in a single heart.  None of those are omitted from the wars that God can end.  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is peace.     

So if you’re hurting from the need to resolve one of the Genie’s three rules in your life, reach out to God in prayer.  Ask Him to do what you cannot do.  Instead of asking him to take the wheel, ask Him to just take the whole thing.  And then, BE STILL.