Psalm 46 Amplified Bible
God the Refuge of His People.
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of the sons of Korah, set to soprano voices. A Song.
46 God is our refuge and strength [mighty and impenetrable],
A very present and well-proved help in trouble.
2
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains be shaken and slip into the heart of the seas,
3
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains tremble at its roaring. Selah.
4
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling places of the Most High.
5
God is in the midst of her [His city], she will not be moved;
God will help her when the morning dawns.
6
The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered and were moved;
He raised His voice, the earth melted.
7
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold [our refuge, our high tower]. Selah.
8
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
Who has brought desolations and wonders on the earth.
9
He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow into pieces and snaps the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.
10
“Be still and know (recognize, understand) that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth.”
11
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold [our refuge, our high tower]. Selah.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Adeste Fidelis. Venite Adoremus. Dominum.
Gloria. In Excelsis Deo. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.
Be Still and Know that I Am God.
We will tend to believe of being “busy” as something positive—something of a measure of our true success in life, maybe even a compliment—especially when we consider the negative implications of its opposites, being “idle” or “lazy.”
But we should not always assume, consider “busyness” as a Christian virtue.
Have you ever thought that busyness might just be a sign of Christian betrayal rather than Christian commitment?
We should definitely be thankful that many believers are busy for the Lord.
Giving, sacrificing our time and ourselves in service to God’s kingdom is an absolutely essential part of the believer’s life and the Christian experience.
But mere busyness does not necessarily equal faithfulness in the Christian life.
In a time of great social economic political upheaval and national crisis, God emphatically urged his people to simply “be still” and know that he was God.
Twice in Psalm 46, God’s people heard the assurance that the Lord Almighty was with them.
He would be their comfort and mighty fortress.
The key to experiencing that assurance, though, would be to approach God with a stilled heart and quiet trust.
When we actually withdraw from our busy lives to spend time with God, we find ourselves discovering, enjoying, experiencing the truest reality of his presence.
While we are not called by God to be either lazy or idle, neither are we called to a life of non-stop activity and service.
God’s gently emphatic invitation, “be still” unlocks for us the opportunity to experience the maximum allowable joy of actually, genuinely, knowing him.
What a blessed comfort this verse has been to multitudes of believers in Christ, down through the ages, who have heeded God’s invitation and rested on these words of the Psalmist and had their hearts stilled in the presence of the Lord.
What refreshment these simple words have bestowed on many little lambs who have listened to the voice of their Good Shepherd – that Great Shepherd of the sheep Who opens His arms wide to embrace all who will truly trust in His name.
But in context, we see another component to these words of reassurance.
We see a genuine plan to glorify His Name and to exult His Person among the nations of the world who rage against the God of heaven and His anointed King.
He is our Defense and our Defender against the enemies of our soul, and all who rest in Him find courage and strength.
He is our impenetrable refuge from the storms of life and our shelter in the midst of oppression, and we are called to be still and to know that He is God – for His purposes will never fail, He will be glorified throughout the whole earth.
It is of the greatest encouragement, both to His people Israel, and to His children of every age, that men who follow their own atheistic ‘will’ and construct their own anti-God plans, will finally be brought to nothing.
For God, and God alone will be exulted among the heathen and His purposes alone will come to fruition – but we who have trusted Him for salvation are to sit serenely in His presence, in quiet assurance, confidence and in godly trust.
Like the people of Israel in times past, Church-age believers are invited, called upon to ponder, remember the mighty deeds that God has done and to recall the myriad beyond myriads of miraculous, wondrous works that He has performed.
We are to rest confidently in the knowledge that He is our faithful God – the supreme Creator of all and Commander of the armies of heaven Who redeems us by faith in the shed blood of Christ, and will never leave us nor forsake us.
We are to:
rest peacefully in the truth of His Word and be still in His holy presence.
We are to know in our heart, by faith with thanksgiving, that He is the Lord our God Who alone pardons all our iniquities, heals all our diseases, Who redeems our life from the pit, and Who crowns us with lovingkindness and compassion.
He alone is our God Who satisfies our years with good things, renews our youth like the eagle.
He performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious… slow to anger and abounding in steadfast and immovable lovingkindness.
He is our Redeemer our Saviour and Friend.
He alone is our hope and strength, He will be exalted, for it is He who has made us, not we ourselves, for we are His beloved people, the sheep of His pasture.
Although the nations rage like the billows of the sea and the people imagine a vain thing against the Lord God Almighty, we are invited, called to be still in the presence of the Lord and to know Him in our heart by faith, with thanksgiving.
May we ponder what it means to be still in His presence and cease from all our strivings… and truly be at peace in His company – Whom to know is life eternal.
The Importance of How I View God
In light of the past few weeks’ of worldwide revival events, I have been taking more time to reflect and ponder.
My emotions have created a mixed bag, from skepticism to doubt, disbelief, questions, and indescribable awe.
On one hand, I decisively, definitely praise God if He is using these services to truly speak and to deeply ignite and inspire and move to transform lives.
I have not been to any of the services, but I have watched many of the streams and videos and I have been “stilled” and moved to tears of indescribable joy.
I know that God is powerful and can do anything He chooses, especially when we are not expecting it – but witnessing those students, images of people into the streets of our nation’s cities, into prisons and many international cities?
Such an inexplicably powerful experience to see the people acting on their belief that God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is “on the move.”
On the other, however, I think it’s a good and righteous thing to be cautious and careful with what we quickly interpret as come to believe to be the Spirit of God.
Even the Bereans in Acts 17 do this when Paul presents the gospel message to them.
Though eager to hear Paul’s teachings, they move to test them themselves in the Holy Scriptures, Study, Pray, Ponder, and then decide what is from God.
“As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men” (Acts 17:10-12, NIV).
Paul was known as an excellent teacher and an even better friend.
He truly cared that every person heard and had access to the Bible after his conversion from Saul to Paul.
This is why Paul felt called to attend as many missionary journeys as he did!
But no matter how great the speaker, one’s credibility and ability to represent the gospel should always be prudently studied analyzed in light of the Bible.
People are not the source of light themselves but are the ones pointing to the Light.
For this reason, 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 further notes,
“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil” (NIV).
While I am not one to debate or judge if these revival services are real or not, their appearance has caused me to think about how I view God.
And more importantly, if I understand Him.
How Do You View God?
I was born into the Evangelical United Church of the Brethren.
Growing up, I was raised in a traditional EUB Church until 1968 when the churches merged to become the United Methodist Church.
I remember every service, worship session, and layout for an event looked exactly the same.
Over time, I didn’t know why I was doing or saying what I did.
Being so young as I was [7 years old] I didn’t even understand the Apostle’s Creed that I recited by heart every Sunday.
Quickly, God and my relationship with Him became routine, just rehearsed words that needed to be prayed to maintain my perfection status.
By the time I reached high school, my father had remove us from the Methodist Church and we then became members of a local conservative Jewish Synagogue.
My view of a God as my father became fractured was immensely distorted, and I truly started to wonder and ask, where is God, Jesus in the midst of my separation?
Verses that call God our Abba, or Father, have been an enormous challenge for me to understand and accept.
I have wrestled for years with how God can be “One God,” for everyone, angry and loving, forgiving and punishing, reachable, yet above and beyond us all.
But it wasn’t until a recent “live” revival streaming session that I realized I should give my current view of God so much more contemplation – and that led me to todays verse, to ask these questions: “Be Still?” “Do I Understand Him?”
Do I Understand Him?
While I might dare to believe we would all like to say we know and understand God fully, from how He works to why things happen the way they do, I do not think nor do I believe that “understanding God” is even remotely possible.
It is possible to know and have an intimate, close, and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
This is why Jesus came and died for us, so we could partake in this personal relationship with Him.
That’s the core essence of the gospel message.
However, God never expected us to try and figure out all His ways.
Isaiah 55:8-9 notes, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV).
1 Corinthians 2:15-16 furthers this point when it says:
“The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ” (ESV).
While we can obtain a mind like Christ’s, in purity, hope, and love, this does not mean that we will know and understand all that He does.
He is still God, and we are not.
He is still all-powerful, and we are not.
His ways are not our ways, and that is for a reason.
Should We Know It All?
When I was younger, and far more naïve than I am right now, I used to believe that if I knew “everything that would happen to me”, my life would be better.
If I always knew exactly what God wanted me to do, where He wanted me to go, and what He was doing, my life would be easier.
I look back now over the course of the last 43 years and I can only laugh.
As an anxious person, not only would I find all of this information to be rather overwhelming and paralyzing, but I’m confident that if I indeed “knew it all,”
two things would happen:
one, I would not rely on God to get through them,
two, I would try to convince Him, like Moses or Jonah, that I was never ever going to be the right person for whatever task He “dared” called me into.
In Jonah 1, beginning in verse 1, Jonah runs from God because of his fears.
God calls him to a high-caliber task, but Jonah doesn’t feel up for the journey.
Even later, when he runs back to God, he becomes angry at God for His grace, the same grace that was given to him earlier in the chapter.
Countless people in the Bible tried to understand God.
From Abraham, to Moses to Aaron, Job, and David and all the biblical writers.
But if I’ve learned anything from their interactions, it’s that God cannot be entirely understood, and while we can have a close fellowship with Him, He will still be above and beyond anything we could fully comprehend here on earth.
What Have I Learned About How I View God?
So what have I learned about how I view God?
I have learned that while God is a loving Father figure.
He is also so much more than I will ever be able to grasp.
He is unpredictable.
He is unlikely.
He moves in ways we’d think He would and ways we wouldn’t.
He is a quiet, still whisper but also a mighty and powerful storm.
He’s an oxymoron to those who don’t believe in Him and a mystery to those who do.
Today, I am learning that I have many more years of learning to go.
I will not understand Him entirely, but I’m choosing every day to grow closer to Him through prayer, reading the Bible, studying, meditating, and experiencing Him as I live – and something tells me that it’s okay-This is a life-long process.
How I view God is still growing.
I anticipate your view of God is growing as well.
I want to know Him as a Father.
I want you the reader to know Him as a Father.
I’ve known Him as a Friend.
I want you the reader to know Him as a Friend.
And I want to know and view Him for all that He is.
And I want you the reader to know and view Him for all that He is.
Even if it takes the maxed our entirety of a thousand lifetimes to experience:
“Be still and know (recognize, understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth.” 11 The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold [our refuge, our high tower]. Selah. [Psalm 46:10-11 AMP]
The predicted and the unpredicted.
The known and the unknown.
However He is, that’s how I want to know and view Him.
Why ever He is, that is how I want to know and view Him.
Whenever He is, that is how I want to know and view Him.
Where ever He is, that is how I want to know and view Him.
Perhaps, you the reader, from wherever you are, will join in the joy?
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Lord God Almighty, we rejoice that you are with us. Teach us to be still so that increasingly we can experience your presence in our lives through your Holy Spirit within. Father, I praise You that Your Word stands fast for ever and ever and that Your precious promises encourage me to rest in Your love and drink deeply from the Rock of my salvation. Draw near to every member of Christ’s Body and protect Your people Israel against the increasing roar of the nations. I pray for the salvation of the lost and for Your soon return, when Your name be exalted throughout all the earth and the nations will KNOW that You are God. I ask in the name of my Savior Jesus.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 