I was reading verses about God’s love on the internet yesterday and I came across this one:
The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.
– Zephaniah 3:17 NKJV
A little background: I have anxiety, and most of the time it is pretty well controlled. I don’t take anything for it, I’ve just sort of learned how to calm myself down when I feel myself ramping up. However, this last week I was feeling crushed by it. When Conrad called the congregation to the front to experience God, then entire time all I could feel was something like a huge, heavy brick in my chest. It was like a block to anything I could have experienced. I spent the whole time pleading for release and, while I felt a bit calmer when I left the alter, I can’t say that my anxiety really went away. It was discouraging, to say the least.
So I talked about it at home group and about the fact that for a very long time, years even, while I know God is with me and is supplying me and loves me I haven’t had one of those glowy, mountaintop experiences with him. You know when you can physically feel him with you? It hasn’t happened in a very, very long time.
Sue Lee encouraged me to ask God for a verse that is mine. Thus the internet search for God’s love and the discovery of the verse from Zephaniah. While I can’t say that this is my life-verse, I can say that it spoke to me in my current state of mind. God quiets me with his love. God’s love can be a quiet, calming thing; it doesn’t always have to be the fiery, soul-searing experience that I think we are all looking for. Which I suppose is good, because I’m not a particularly fiery sort of girl. I’m always looking for that quiet spot, that bit of peace in the day. Loud is not my thing. And being quieted is WONDERFUL when you can’t stop thinking and the anxieties just keep piling up, one upon the other.
I realize now that even if I never feel the top of the mountain I can still know that God is with me in my times of quiet. In those rare times that my brain stops spinning and everything is blissfully silent. That is God, too, breaking through all of the noise, giving me peace, rejoicing over me with gladness, quieting me with his love.