Caption: When the Lord fights for you, stillness becomes your greatest weapon.
Alt-text (main): Woman sitting down and waiting.
Photo by Matthew Jackson
‘He says, “Be still, and know that I am God“‘ (Psalm 46:10).
When we fret, we do more than worry. We actively manipulate, strive, and try to control outcomes that belong only to God.
Fretting is our frantic effort to be our own savior.
Yet God invites us to something radically different: to let go and experience His peace.
What makes this difficult is that being still feels like doing nothing. Yet Exodus 14:14 gives the counterintuitive promise: “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.“
God’s battle on your behalf is not passive but deliberate, just, and purposeful. We stay still as He stays moving.
That is the core paradox of faith, and learning how to be still before God begins with trusting that the Lord fights for you even when you see no evidence of it.
Ashley D. Wille writes in My Journey Through the Cross about this very struggle. She describes being trapped in “a cycle of frustration on a plateau of status-quo faith,” knowing intuitively “there was much more to this God thing than [she] was experiencing.”
She determined to find the way to break beyond the barrier—and that barrier is often our own striving.
Photo by Felipe Balduino
What It Really Means to Be Still Before God
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways” (Psalm 37:7).
Understanding how to be still before God begins with correcting a common mistake. Stillness is not laziness or indifference, as some might believe. It is an active posture of trust.
Ashley explains that being still means “ceasing self-defense, releasing the need for vengeance, and silencing inner panic,” which is the exact opposite of passivity.
To be still is a decision to stop fighting battles that were never yours to begin with.
Stillness also means letting go of your timeline.
Ashley writes about learning to focus solely on God throughout the day—while teaching, running errands, or even at night. She compares this focus to a laser beam:
“The collective energy in a 60-watt bulb when focused into a laser beam can cut through steel. Likewise, using the Word of God, the collective energy of the heart and mind can be focused into a heavenly laser that can pierce through the thickest darkness.”
This is what it means to be still. It is refusing to rehearse worst-case scenarios and surrendering your day in prayer and meditating on Scripture. When we practice sacred quiet, our perspective shifts from our timeline to God’s timetable. And when that happens, you begin to see that the Lord fights for you in ways you never expected.
Waiting patiently is not wasting time. It is expectant hope, like a watchman looking for dawn, not a prisoner watching the clock.
Being still before God means believing that He sees what you don’t, knows what you can’t, and will act when the time is right.
Waiting Without Wearing Out
“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil“ (Psalm 37:8).
Fretting leads only to evil and invites the enemy into your thought life. Ashley explains that “biting a hook always makes perfect sense, according to my human reasoning, as a sparkling promise of fulfillment. Once I bite down, though, it is nearly impossible to squirm away.”
The hooks are distractions—media, comparisons, the never-ending activities of city life.
To wait without wearing out, you must guard your heart. Ashley describes learning to “divorce [her] heart and mind from the often imperceptible mind-numbing influence of many cultural forces.” She kept her eyes focused “with blinders on [her] King.” This is spiritual warfare.
You are not fighting people or circumstances. You are fighting the lies that tell you God is not enough.
But when you stand firm, the Lord fights for you as your defender, and victory comes from the Lord alone.
When you wait well, the Lord fights for you in ways you can never imagine. Ashley recounts countless rescues: finding a lost sock in an impossible place, receiving a timely phone call with exactly the information she needed, even a cloud formation that answered a desperate prayer. God’s ways of advocating for you are plenty and mysterious. Often, they’re plenty mysterious and mysteriously plenty!
“[Ashley] can honestly say that [she never confessed her] sins to God because [she agrees] with Him that He has [already] taken them away.”
That is victory: resting in what Christ has already finished. God delivers you not by removing every struggle, but by showing Himself faithful within every one.
The outcome of stillness is not that your problems vanish but that your character is shaped more than your circumstances are changed. Ashley writes of her marriage that “[had she] escaped the flames during the process, [she] would have missed out on the holy resting place He had reserved for [her].”
She concludes that “[she] would do it all again in order to find His perfect Sabbath rest.”
The Lord fights for you by transforming you from the inside out. Your job is faith while His job is victory.
Photo by Jagaba Denis
A Closing Exhortation to Be Still
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest“ (Matthew 11:28).
Choose stillness today. Even for just five minutes, sit in silence before Him. Let the noise of worry fade and the urge to control and strive fall away.
How to be still before God is not overly complicated. It’s simple, though not easy.
“[Ashley has] been forced to divorce [her] heart and mind from the often imperceptible mind-numbing influence of many cultural forces.” As such, she chose to “let every ball fall into [her] tired arms” and hurl them upward into her Father’s lap.
You can do the same. The God who delivered you yesterday will not abandon you today. Stillness is not weakness but strength anchored in faith.
The Lord fights for you—you need only to be still.
Discover the full depth of this journey—pick up Ashley D. Wille’s My Journey Through the Cross today and find your own path to lasting rest.
