Quietness of heart overcomes all (from Ray Ortlund Jr.)

Posted: 12 Apr 2013 08:07 AM PDT

“In quietness and trust shall be your strength.”  Isaiah 30:15

The greatest power in all this world is not military or political or sexual or commercial.   The greatest power, which will outlast all others (“above all earthly powers”), resides deep within the simplest believer.  Quietness of heart before God, trusting in him, is our strength, and there is no greater strength.

Alec Motyer comments insightfully, “Quietness is the absence of panic and restlessness.  It is the product not of refusal to face life but of insistence upon taking God into account in trust.”

This quietness is not denial but indeed its opposite.  It is facing God, taking God as God fully into account, treating God as more real than everything so firmly set against us, including our own needs and sins, because he is more real.

Quietness of heart is not outwardly impressive.  Which is why we sometimes get nervous, why trusting in God can feel like skating on thin ice.  But it is God’s good wisdom — and there is no other — for the display of his all-sufficiency.

Quietness of heart before God is where fugitives stop running, and start resting, and become stalwarts and overcomers, because God himself is there.