Today, we're going to take a posture of peace
by leaning into the silence that we sometimes encounter
in our relationship with God.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale.
Posture is a podcast that serves a short,
audible fist bump to remind you that God is in everything.
Together, we're gonna be emboldened
to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
Psalm chapter 46, verse 10 says,
be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the earth.
This week, I have been sharing
about developing a confident expectation
in God's goodness in every situation.
And yesterday in episode 48,
I shared about how I'm aligning my prayer life
with this expectation, and I've allowed,
I'm allowing peace to author all of my prayers.
I've had to step away from quickly just throwing up prayers
that are birthed from my own panic
and desperation about a situation.
And instead, I'm now learning to make the starting point
of all of my prayers be thanksgiving to God.
Now, if you watched yesterday's episode,
a natural question you may have is,
okay, what's the next step?
What comes next?
What's the next step?
What comes after the thanksgiving part?
And I just wanna be careful here
to not prescribe some kind of step-by-step prayer formula.
That is not the goal at all,
because I don't believe that there's just one way to pray.
But what I have found helpful
is when people share with me
what they've been learning about God,
how they communicate with God
and their prayer life, their secret place.
That's why I'm sharing this with you
is just a encouragement,
a way to inspire you to think differently about prayer.
And I mentioned yesterday this book
that was written by one of my spiritual mentors, Graham Cook.
It's called, Crafted Prayer,
The Joy of Always Getting Your Prayers Answered.
I highly recommend it.
I'll put a link to this book
in the description of this episode
in case you're interested in checking it out.
I hope you do.
This book has really helped me break free
from my own limited view of prayer,
and it's expanded my understanding
of what the empowering presence of God
means for my prayer life.
So as I pray, and as you can imagine,
I'm praying a lot these days.
I'm sure you are too.
As I pray, I'm learning to practice
what is written in Psalm 46,
to be still and know that God is God.
I'm learning to step away from the noise,
the chaos, the confusion
that's coming from the situation I'm praying about.
And instead, I'm entering into my secret place,
my refuge, with my divine prayer team,
Jesus and the Holy Spirit,
like we talked about yesterday.
And it's in this place of stillness,
I'm actually usually met with silence.
So often when I enter into an awareness
of his presence with thanksgiving,
there is then this stillness and silence that I encounter.
And in fact, it happens so regularly
that now I often anticipate the silence.
It's not a point of dread for me or frustration anymore,
because now I know that his presence
is just as transformative as his voice.
So what happens in the silence is that the peace,
which is always in me, by the way,
and it's always in you,
because the Prince of Peace himself is in us,
that peace rises from my spirit to my head,
and it silences the negativity, the accusation,
the panic, the confusion, the stress
that's coming from the situation or the need.
And in the silence, in the stillness,
in the presence of my prayer team,
I'm not fighting off negativity
or striving to be more peaceful.
I am allowing the peace of my prayer team to rule my heart,
just like Colossians 3 talks about.
I used to believe that the silence
meant that I was being ignored by God
or that he had like left me and I was abandoned.
A worse belief, too, is that I would also believe
that I wasn't spiritual enough to hear God speaking,
which that belief actually caused me way more panic
than whatever situation I was actually facing,
you know, praying about.
But now I know, because I'm fully convinced
of God's consistent nature to never leave me,
that it's in the silence
where I can allow my trust in the Lord,
my peace, to silence the enemy.
In the stillness, before I ask anything or hear anything,
I'm becoming even more aware of who God is for me
as I am with him.
So today, I would love for you to try it.
Make room for the stillness and silence in your prayer life.
Don't be frustrated by the silence.
Instead, savor.
his presence. And by the way, this is not about necessarily getting alone in a quiet room or a
quiet space. That's helpful, but I know it's not always possible. This is more about an inner
stillness. I have been still in the midst of really hard conversations. I have been still
in the midst of packed schedules and busy days. I have been still in the midst of all the chaos
and noise and confusion swirling around me right now with this pandemic. Stillness, like peace,
is a posture. It's a stance. It's standing firm while leaning into the majesty of God's presence
and provision. It's deciding not to turn the chaotic head noise, all the lies, the accusation,
the dire facts about the situation into a prayer based on my own strength. But instead, it's
mirroring the stance of my Prince of Peace because he's not worried or panicked about anything.
So today, try it. Practice stillness because even before you know exactly what to pray,
in the stillness, you are already overcoming the enemy's schemes to drag you into a pit of despair
and hold you under the weight of your circumstances. You can trust this. No matter
what you face today, your prayer team is already present and they are already praying.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26 3. And in Hebrew, it is shalom shalom,
meaning complete wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus.
Let's declare this together. Today, I am kept in perfect peace. With my whole heart,
I trust the Lord. I am strong. I am victorious. I am whole. Remember friend, you are a living
testimony of Jesus's ultimate win, not because of anything you did, but because of what he did
for you. With every step you take today, you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's
defeat on replay.