Only to sit and think of God
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the
Name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love’s reward!
What rapture it will be,
Prostrate before They throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
Frederick Faber
Have you ever done that? Just sat and thought only of God? Closed your mind’s eyes and your heart’s eyes to everything around you except God – even for a few moments? What was it like? Joy? Bliss? Reward? Rapture?
As I read Mr. Faber’s heart-thoughts those questions came to my mind. I thought about whether I truly see thinking on God as the blessing and privilege that it is. Did you also know it is an instruction from Jesus? Yes, it is.
In our daily lives we do little sitting and thinking, we don’t have to. We don’t have to be smart, we have phones that are smart for us. We don’t have to keep calendars, we have computers that tell us when and where to be. We have electronics that think for us. We have television that tells us what we should think and how we should think. We are so programmed. Our lives are filled to the brim with work, games, meetings, commitments, Church. Who has time to sit and think? We have lost the gift of sitting and thinking — simply coming before the King – kneeling at the Cross.
Jesus tells us in Luke 10:42 “But one thing is needful…” This is Jesus’s word — needful. The word needful means necessary or required. Read Luke 10:38-42. You know this story. It is the story of Jesus’s visit with Martha and Mary. We’ve read it a thousand times and what do we take away from it? We take from it that some folks are Marthas, always busy, always preparing, always serving and that some folks are Marys, they know how to sit and think of Jesus. Somedays we are both Martha and Mary. Somedays neither. Jesus tells us that what Mary was doing, sitting at his feet, was “needful.” Here’s the thing – we need to sit at Jesus’s feet and think on Him too. If we are honest, we know that. If we’re honest, we probably don’t do it often enough.
Luke tells the story of the man possessed by demons in Luke 8:35. Verse 35 says: “And they saw the man who had been possessed by demons sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet.” He needed Jesus.
In Mark 3:34 Jesus again tells how folks sat: “And he looked round about on them which sat about him.” They needed Jesus.
Charles Spurgeon puts it this way:
Some things in this world are necessary, after a measure, but this is necessary without measure; infinitely needful is it that you sit at Jesus’ feet, needful now, needful in life; needful in life for peace, in death for rest, and eternity for bliss. This is always needful.
Over and over again in God’s perfect Word we are given examples of the “needful thing” — “sitting.” So how does it work? Practically speaking, how do we sit at Jesus’s feet? How do we carve out time just to sit and think on Him? What does that look like in our lives? How do we push away the busyness and anxiousness in our lives to make room for the only thing we really need in our lives?
We’re talking sitting at his feet, in complete submission and total reliance and meditating only on Him. Commit to sitting at the feet of Jesus daily. What would it take for you to make that commitment? What would need to change? What do you need to get rid of in order to come prostrate before him and think on Him, to Submit, to Obey, to Glorify, to Learn, to Know Him More, to Love?