Practicing stillness, doing nothing, is so hard in this day and age. Personally I always find that I am longing for a few hours to do nothing and when the time comes, I end up busying myself with chores, life admin or worse, doom scrolling on Instagram. Even when I do sit in peace for a few minutes, my mind is racing with all the things I could be doing. It’s like that meme of parents trying to shower, iron, batch cook, have lunch, message friends back, exercise and do self care all in the time their baby has a nap. There is always something we could be doing and the nature of society now is we can see others doing it ‘better’ than us.

But in all of that, how do we hear God? How can we quieten the things we should be doing, to make space for what we actually need: time with Him?

Our blog on Christian Meditation might help; it was from week three of our Lent devotional:  ‘Make Space For What Matters’.

In moments of practicing stillness, we become more aware of God’s presence within us and around us. Practicing stillness is both an active pursuit and a posture of surrender. It means allowing God to sharpen our focus and attune our hearts to His voice while we release our inner noise to Him. It requires us to let go of our worries and burdens, trusting Him to realign our hearts with His purpose.

It is therefore important that we practice stillness. Allowing ourselves the time and grace to hear Him, but also to hand over to Him what we feel too heavy a burden. Today during our prayer and worship time, we paused, holding our hands out, asking God what it is He has given us and spend time in the quiet, asking Him what He wants it to look like/how He wants it to work.

Action Step: Get away for a few hours (it might be more manageable to do minutes depending on the season of life you’re in) this week and practice giving God whatever concerns come to mind. It’s okay if you have to do this repeatedly for a while. Just use this time to silence the noise inside you and get into the habit of making space to hear God’s voice.