Day 9 – Issue 14

Be Still Know

Mark 1:35 NLT

Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

I am an activist by nature and enjoy busyness. I’m too often driven by an internal audit intent on measuring my usefulness against my use of time.

In my early Christian life, I was all about Christian service. I found both my spiritual realisation and purpose in service. Now, nothing wrong with serving, it is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching, but not at the expense of intimacy with God. The two fit neatly together like a hand in a glove. The hand can carry out many tasks, yet for its protection and warmth it at times needs to secure the protection of the glove. So with God. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we need also to hide within God for our own provision and protection.

Jesus recognises that he too must steal away to find intimacy with his Father if he is to sustain his powerful ministry. We learn little of the substance of such moments, yet recognise that if we’re to follow in Jesus’ footsteps there is an important lesson for us here.

I know for many years I found my joy and strength basking in the glow of God’s intervention through my ministry. It was almost as if my identity, my meaning was determined by my ministry, the more powerful the better. I stopped drawing aside with God, believing ministry was testimony enough that God was with me. While God accomplished many things, I was an increasingly distant stranger to him. Nothing to do with God, but everything to do with me.

When the power drained away and I faced childlessness and then Katey’s MS, I was in deficit, for without the fruit from my ministry I had nothing to reflect upon.

QUESTION: Where do you find your identity? Is it in the doing of things for God?

PRAYER: Father, show me again that my identity is not in the things I do but the finished work that Jesus did.