Adorn Yourself with the Peace that Passes Understanding

I careened into the driveway and slammed the engine into park. My breathing was shallow and quick. I was hot and sweaty and felt like the car was closing in on me. I flung open the door and hung my legs out, hunching over on my knees.

What is happening to me? I wondered. I re-traced my day, realizing I had lost myself in a mental spiral about my career. I knew I would soon be looking for another job, though I didn’t know what kind, if I would have to move my family, or what that would even look like.

Fortunately, I was seeing a counselor around that time. I told her what happened, and she asked about my prayer life. “Huh?” I said, confused. “Your prayer life. How is it?” she replied.

Ugh, I thought, knowing it was basically non-existent. “It’s not very good,” I told her.

As we talked, I realized that as my anxiety increased, my prayer decreased. As my inner world became noisier, I filled the prayer space with podcasts, music, and audiobooks—anything to keep me from dealing with my thoughts.

And it was ruining me.

HEARTBURN

The more I hid from my thoughts, the more I felt like David in Psalm 39:

I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse. My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned . . .

I’m guessing you’ve felt the same before. You tie your stomach in knots while planning your next move. You’re not sure if that school is right for the kids: They might excel academically, but what about their influences? You’re wondering what’ll happen if you take that job: Will my family be upset? Will we regret it in a year? You feel exhausted even when you aren’t doing anything physically strenuous. You’re depleted, anxious, uneasy, discontent.

David was no stranger to these emotions. Before he was crowned king, he spent years on the run from Saul, who wanted him dead because Saul knew God had promised David the throne. At one point, David took to hiding in caves. Alone in those damp, dark caverns, he surely had to ask God, What are you doing? I thought I was supposed to be king, but here I am hiding from a madman. Will this ever end? How long, O Lord?!

THE LONGEST PSALM TO LEARN

I wouldn’t be surprised if David eventually worked himself into a tizzy like I did that day in my car. But David didn’t have a counselor to calm him down, so what did he do? He wrote this prayer:

 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

It may not look like much at first, but Psalm 131 is one of the finest gems in all the Psalms. “It is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn,” wrote Charles Spurgeon.

He’s right. I stumbled onto this psalm during those days of inner turmoil and it became a balm to my heart, soul, and mind. These three short verses reached down and plucked me from the cave I was hiding in.

Much like the other Psalms of Ascent, this song starts low but rises to great heights. It can take a wild-minded person and subdue them into an unhurried soul. And it starts with humility.

I DON’T WANT TO BE KING

David starts his appeal by admitting he has been humbled. Verse 1 shows the future king brought low by years of scrambling and surviving. His heart was no longer set on the throne. His eyes stopped gazing up as he daydreamed of ruling. He quit trying to figure out what only God can know.

David rightly connected his heart, eyes, and soul, for “What the heart desires, the eyes look for. Where the desires run, the glances usually follow.”[i]

God wanted David gazing up not at the throne, but at him. So it is with us. God wants us peering up with anticipation, but he wants our gaze fixed on him, not the things of this world.

Too often, I want to understand how the puzzle fits together. I want to know why things happen. I want all the information. But my eyes can only be one place at a time. When I’m fixated on planning my steps, I miss the God who establishes them (Prov. 16:9).

A humble and lowly heart is the beginning of sanctification. God works not with a heart of stone, but with a heart of flesh, softened and made malleable by being brought low. And what starts in the heart continues into the soul.

BE STILL MY SOUL

In verse 2, we see the result of David’s humbled heart—a calm and quiet soul. But this tranquil state didn’t happen on its own. David says, “I have calmed and quieted my soul.” It was an act of the will; in fact, it was a deliberate submission of his will before the Lord.

The word translated calmed can also be rendered composed. “To compose your soul means literally to level it. [To] bulldoze the building site,” writes David Powlison. “To quiet your soul means to silence the noise and tumult. [To say] ‘Sssshhh’ to your desires, fears, opinions, anxieties, agendas, and irritabilities.”[ii]

David stopped trying to control the uncontrollable, quieted his manic thoughts, and was left with a peaceful soul.

A peaceful soul is only possible when it has been hushed into submission. This surely rubs us the wrong way, but David gives us a word-picture to explain. He has calmed and quieted his soul “like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

As a father of four, I’ve learned that an unweaned child frantically roots around for milk when they’re anywhere near their mother. When it comes time to wean the child, they cry their little hearts out, breaking their mother’s in the process.

But the mother stays the course because she knows it’s necessary if the child is ever going to go on to solid food. After a while, the child moves on and is no longer overcome by their former desire. A weaned child can simply enjoy being in his mother’s lap, and this satisfaction is not a matter of food but of the heart.

This is a picture of David’s humbled heart. This infantile contentment leads to a parental concern for others, as seen in verse 3.

WAIT WITH HOPE

A humbled heart is freed to love and care for others. “Pride dies as the humility of faith lives,” writes Powlison.

As David’s pride died, his humble faith began to live, and the overflow of his contentment was to plead with his people not to make the same mistakes. “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore,” he says.

Stop pursuing impossibilities and start pursuing certainties. Hope in God, who we know is unchanging and good and loving. Don’t get impatient and move forward without him.

Eugene Peterson paraphrased verse 3 this way: “Wait, Israel, for God. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!” A humble heart and submissive will allow us to wait with hope. Hope for the next phase, the next doctor’s appointment, the next meeting, the next day, even the next life. That hope then feeds and sustains humility in our hearts and helps us see the wisdom of submitting our souls to the God who formed our innermost parts (Ps. 139).

“When we cease to hanker for the world we begin hoping for the Lord,” wrote Spurgeon. The only way to cease longing for the world is to pick up our cross daily and follow the Lord of hope. That daily dying requires a humble heart, a submitted soul, and a patient hope.

THE PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

Once I realized I was ruining my soul by trying to control the uncontrollable, I calmed and quieted it instead. I memorized Psalm 131 as ammunition against my anxious thoughts. I fasted from podcasts and other audio while running or walking in the mornings. I deleted social media from my phone and blocked it in my browser.

I was back behind the wheel one morning when I realized I could feel the silence in my soul. I wasn’t inundated with anxieties. I was calm. I was quiet.

I wish I could say that tranquility has lasted, but I’ve relapsed many times since then. I am calmer and quieter than I’ve ever been, but I have a long way to go in turning over my heart, eyes, and soul to the Lord. Maybe you do, too.

If so, David’s last line in the psalm can bring us comfort. Linger over these words: “O believer, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.”

Spurgeon wrote that Psalm 131 is like a pearl that will beautifully adorn the neck of patience. Be patient, brother. Be patient, sister. Hope in the Lord and adorn yourself with the peace that passes understanding.

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[i] Charles H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David: Explanatory Notes and Quaint Sayings on Psalm 131, http://www.romans45.org/spurgeon/treasury/ps131.htm.

[ii] David Powlison, “’Peace, be still’: Learning Psalm 131 by Heart,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 18 No. 3, Spring 2000, https://www.ccef.org/wp-content/uploads/archive/sites/default/files/pdf/dp_psalm131_1803002.pdf.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

How to Turn Down the Volume of Your Anxiety

Perhaps you’ve met Ms. Frantic. She arrives at the gym at 8:00 a.m. Hours later, she’s still pounding the treadmill, pumping iron, and powering away on the rowing machine, barely stopping to catch snatched sips from her water bottle. She looks exhausted, miserable, and ready to faint, but still she goes on. You ask her why she is doing this, and she replies, “Because I must.” When you press her, asking, “But, why must you?” she looks at you strangely, and impatiently exclaims, “I don’t know, I just must! There’s always more to do.”

Ms. Reflective also starts bright and early at 8:00 a.m., but she’s different. She uses the same machines and works equally hard at points, but not all the time. Every now and then, she enjoys a drink of refreshing cold water. Sometimes she pauses to look out the windows and simply watch the world go by. She laughs at the children splashing in the nearby swimming pool. She even spots a friend exercising and has time to wave, give a big encouraging smile, and sometimes chat.

Now ask yourself, “Which of these two images reflects how I live my life before God?” Am I Ms. Frantic or Ms. Reflective? Am I overworking and over-stressed, or am I taking time to think and to enjoy God’s world?

A MARTHA WORLD

“Women Are Working Themselves to Death,” warned a recent headline.[1] It was based on a joint study by Ohio State University and The Mayo Clinic that compared almost eight thousand men and women over a thirty-two-year period and found that working over forty hours a week did serious damage to women’s health, causing increased risk of heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes.[2] Working sixty or more hours a week tripled the risk of these conditions. Not surprisingly, the report’s lead author, professor Allard Dembe, warned: “People don’t think that much about how their early work experiences affect them down the road. . . . Women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are setting themselves up for problems later in life.” Unexpectedly, the risks are elevated only for women, not for men. Further analysis led the researchers to conclude that the greater risk to women is not necessarily because women are weaker but because they are doing so much more than men:

"In addition to working at a job, women often come home to a 'second shift' of work where they are responsible for childcare, chores, housework, and more, according to sociologists. All of this labor at home and at work, plus all the stress that comes along with it, is severely affecting women. Research indicates women generally assume greater family responsibilities and thus may be more likely to experience overload compared to men."[3]

Professor Dembe also pointed to less job satisfaction among women because they have to juggle so many obligations at home as well. But this is not a problem just in the greater culture; it’s a problem in the Christian population too. A survey of over a thousand Christian women, sponsored by Christian Woman magazine, found that 60 percent of Christian women work full-time outside the home. Reflecting on this, Joanna Weaver, author of Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, commented, “Add housework and errands to a forty-hour-a-week career, and you have a recipe for weariness.” But she also warned homemakers: “Women who choose to stay at home find their lives just as full. Chasing toddlers, carpooling to soccer, volunteering at school, babysitting the neighbor’s kids— life seems hectic at every level.”[4] Maybe you’re now seeing Ms. Frantic in the mirror or hearing her in your heart and mind.

OUR INNER ORCHESTRA

Every Christian wants to know God more; few Christians fight for the silence required to know him. Instead, we spend our days smashing stillness-shattering, knowledge-destroying cymbals on our ears and in our souls. And with so many gongs and clashes in our lives, it can sometimes be difficult to isolate and identify them. So let me help you do this and then provide some mufflers.[5]

First, there’s the din of guilt, the shame and embarrassment of our dark moral secrets: “I should have . . . I shouldn’t have . . . I should have . . . I shouldn’t have . . . ” clangs noisily in our deep recesses, shattering our peace and disturbing our tranquility.

Then greed starts banging away in our hearts with its relentless drumstick: “I want it. I need it. I must have it. I will have it. I got it. I want it. I need it.” And so on.

And what’s that angry metal beat? It’s hate stirring up malice, ill will, resentment, and revenge: “How could she . . . I’ll get him! She’ll pay for this!” Of course, anger often clatters into the cymbal of controversy, sparking disagreements, debates, disputes, and divisions.

Vanity also adds its proud and haughty thud, drowning out all who compete with our beauty, our talents, and our status. “Me up . . . him down, me up . . . her down, me up . . . all down.”

Anxiety tinkles distractingly in the background too, rapidly surveying the past, the present, and the future for things to worry about: “What if . . . What if . . . What if . . . ” And is that the little, silver triangle of self-pity I hear? “Why me? Why me? Why me?”

The repetitive and unstoppable jangle of expectation comes from all directions—family, friends, employer, church, and especially from ourselves. Oh, for even a few seconds of respite from the tyranny of other people’s demands and especially from our demanding, oversensitive conscience.

And smashing into our lives wherever we turn, we collide with the giant cymbals of the media and technology: local and international, paper and pixels, sound and image, audio and video, beep and tweet, notifications and reminders, and on and on it goes.

Is it any wonder that we sometimes feel as if we’re going mad? Clanking and clanging, jingling and jangling, smashing and crashing, grating and grinding. A large, jarring orchestra of peace-disturbing, soul-dismantling cymbals. Then.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

But how?

SILENCING THE CYMBALS

We can silence the cymbal of guilt by taking faith to the blood of Christ and saying, “Believe!” Believe that all your sins are paid for and pardoned. There’s absolutely no reason to have even one whisper of guilt. Look at that blood until you grasp how precious and effective it is. It can make you whiter than snow and make your conscience quieter than the morning dew.

Greed is not easily silenced. Maybe muffled is about the best we can expect. Practice doing with less than usual, practice not buying even when you can afford it, practice buying nothing but necessities for a time, and practice spending time in the shadow of Calvary. How much less you’ll find you need when you see how much he gave! Draw up your budget at the cross (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Our unholy anger can be dialed down by God’s holy anger. When we feel God’s hot rage against all sin and all injustice, we begin to chill and calm. Vengeance is God’s; he will repay.

The doctrine of total depravity is the ultimate dampener of personal vanity. When I see myself as God sees me, my heart, my mind, and even my posture change. I stop competing for the top spot and start accepting the lowest place. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Hey! I’m beginning to hear some quiet now. But there’s still that rankling anxiety tinkling away. Oh, to be free of that!

Fatherhood.

What?

Yes, the fatherhood of God can turn the volume of anxiety to zero. He knows, he cares, and he will provide for your needs. Mute your “what-ifs” at the bird feeder (Matthew 6:25– 34). As mother-of-two Sarah told me, “Sometimes the things that can start to burn you out or cause you weariness are often things you can’t leave. Just because you’re feeling burned out by the responsibilities surrounding your husband and kids doesn’t mean you can just up and leave—sometimes not even just for an afternoon! Sometimes you just have to put your head down and persist—but at the same time it is important to take to our Father in heaven our emotions and weakness and weariness.”

Oh, and call in total depravity again when self-pity starts up. “Why me?” cannot stand long before “Why not me?”

“She has done what she could” (Mark 14:8). Don’t you just love Christ’s words to Mary when she anointed his head? What an expectation killer! Every time the despotic Devil, other people, or your tyrannical conscience demands more than you can give, remind them of Jesus’s calming words, “She has done what she could.”

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Content taken from Refresh: Embracing a Grace-Paced Life in a World of Endless Demands by Shona and David Murray, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Shona Murray is a mother of five children and has homeschooled for fifteen years. She is a medical doctor and worked as a family practitioner in Scotland until she moved to the United States with her husband, David.

David Murray (DMin, Reformation International Theological Seminary) is professor of Old Testament and practical theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and pastor of Grand Rapids Free Reformed Church. He is also a counselor, a regular speaker at conferences, and the author of Jesus on Every Page.

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[1] Jessica Mattern, “Women Are Working Themselves to Death, Study Shows,” Woman’s Day, July 5, 2016, http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/news/a55529 /working-women-health-risks/.

[2] MistiCrane,“Women’s Long Work Hours Linked to Alarming Increases in Cancer,  Heart  Disease,” Ohio State University, June 16, 2016, https://news.osu.edu/news/2016 /06/16/overtime-women/.

[3] Mattern, “Women Are Working Themselves to Death, Study Shows.”

[4] Joanna Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook, 2000), 7.

[5] Part of this section was previously published in Tabletalk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries. Used by permission.