He has tried, and the trying is the whole story.
He sets aside twenty minutes. He sits down properly. And within about ninety seconds, reliably, every time, one of four things has happened.
He has started praying for people, which is good and is also him doing something.
Or he has started thinking about a passage, which is good and is also him doing something.
Or he has started planning the day, at which point he corrects himself and returns, and the correcting is also him doing something.
Or he has begun assessing the stillness itself. How it is going. Whether he is doing it. Whether anything is happening. Which is the most productive of the four and the least still.
He is fifty and he has been trying variations of this for about eleven years, and he has never once simply been in the room.
He would say he is not good at stillness. That is how he puts it to himself, and it has the shape of a modest admission, and it is really a small ongoing verdict that has never been examined.
The picture David reaches for
David writes a very short psalm about having quieted himself, and the comparison he picks is worth sitting with for a while.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.Psalm 131:2
A weaned child.
Think about what that comparison actually contains, because it is precise and it is easy to read past.
An unweaned child at its mother is there for something. It is there to be fed, and the being there and the getting are the same act, and if nothing comes it cries.
A weaned child at its mother is there for no reason at all. It has been fed elsewhere. It is not extracting anything. It is simply with her, leaning on her, present, and nothing is being transacted in either direction.
That is the state David describes as having quieted himself. Not emptiness. Not technique. The condition of being with somebody without needing to get anything out of the encounter.
You are permitted to be with God for no reason, and Scripture describes that state as the quieted soul. That is not me relaxing a discipline for you; Psalm 131:2 picks the weaned child specifically, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an old image and lays it beside a man ninety seconds into twenty minutes.
Why the four things happen
Now let me look at the four things you do, because they are not random and they have one thing in common.
Praying for people. Thinking about a passage. Planning. Assessing the stillness. Every one of them is a transaction. Every one of them turns the time into something that produces.
You are not bad at stillness. You are extremely good at production, and you have not got any other way of being with somebody, and that is not a spiritual defect. It is what happens to a man who has been useful his whole life and has been rewarded for it every time, at work, at home, in that church.
You have been unable to receive because you have never been anything but a supplier. The written word describes the quieted soul as a weaned child getting nothing and staying anyway, and the Holy Spirit does not require a man to be generating in order to be present with Him.
And the verdict, which is the actual injury here. I am not good at stillness. Eleven years of that sentence, said mildly, said in a way that sounds like humility, has quietly taught you that there is a kind of nearness to God that other people have access to and you do not.
You are not shut out of anything, and no capacity is missing from you. Scripture puts the quieted state in the reach of a person who has simply stopped extracting, and the Holy Spirit has been in the room on every one of the ninety seconds.
So here is the hour, and it asks nothing of you, which is precisely why it will be hard.
I am not going to give you a method for stillness. A method would be a fifth thing to do, and you would be excellent at it inside a week, and that would be the end of it.
And nothing here needs you to succeed. If you sit down tomorrow and are praying for your daughter inside a minute, nothing has failed and no verdict is being passed on you.
What is on offer is that you stop calling it a failure.
The ninety seconds is not you being bad at something. It is a man who has been useful his whole life discovering that he has no experience of being with somebody for no reason, and that discovery is not a fault. It is the beginning of the only thing you have been asking for.
You are able to be present without producing, right now, as you read this, and nothing has ever been required of you in that room. That is what the word of God describes when it names the weaned child, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and takes a verdict off a man of fifty.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these out loud where you are, sitting or standing, in whatever voice today has left you. The right to say them is not manufactured by feeling: Christ is in you, and what God has already put in writing about a soul quieted like a weaned child is the ground under your feet, with the Holy Spirit carrying it rather than the steadiness of your voice. Then leave the outcome to Him, because whether anything settles in two minutes is His to give and never mine to arrange.
- Output I keep generating, you were never once requested. The word of God likens the quieted soul to a weaned child who is there for nothing at all, present, leaning, and extracting no single thing.
- Verdict that I am not good at stillness, you are eleven years old and you have no ground. In the name of Jesus I refuse you the last word, because the Holy Spirit has never required a man to be producing in order to be with Him.
- Lord, You have never once asked me for anything in that chair. I thank You, because Your word puts the quieted soul in the reach of a person who has simply stopped extracting, and Your Spirit has been in the room through every ninety seconds of eleven years.
Psalm 131:2
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.