Be Still and Know

The “tagline” at Iglesia Cristiana Concordia is “Somos Familia. Somos Iglesia.” which means “We are Family. We are Church”. In Peru, it is not common to be open about your personal struggles with anyone outside of your family, including your church. And even then, for most women, they often fight through the silent struggles alone. Pastor Fernando and his wife, Sybil, have a vision to create a tightly knit family culture within their church to encourage the believers to share more of each others’ lives. Sybil didn’t set out to start a women’s Bible study. In fact, she set out to meet once a week for one month as an answer to the LORD’s prompting… but what started as a simple, “yes, let’s encourage the women to pray together for one month” has turned into a group of 12-20 women that have been committed to meeting with each other since April.

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When I (Kelsie) began chatting with Sybil a few months ago about potential ministry opportunities she mentioned that she would love for the women of our team to come be a part of one of their Tuesday night studies and asked me to prepare a short conversational study and craft. So we planned to join the Royal Servants ladies with the Peruvian women in opening our hearts to one another. Most of the women that come each week also bring children- which provided the perfect opportunity for the men on our team to serve the women by caring for and hanging out with their kids.

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That night, we talked about “being still and knowing that He is God”. We read first from Psalm 46 and discussed the importance of what the LORD calls us to do.

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"Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exacted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." Psalm 46:10-11

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Why should we be still? The reason we need to do this is stated next: He will be exalted. The LORD is with us. God is our fortress.

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How do we practice being still? It is so hard to be still - especially as a woman. There are so many pressures on our time. Our families need us. Our jobs demand more time. Taking care of the home can easily fill any gaps of time left. And yet the Bible tells us to be still.

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What would it look like for you to take 5 minutes a day to sit in a quiet place, silence your mind and just listen to the LORD who is with us and is our fortress? (This fostered some great honest conversation about why this is so hard in individual lives) Being STILL is hard. Quiet is hard. But it is essential to care for our souls. We cannot be the fortress for our own lives. We need Jesus to give us strength and care for us.

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One of my favorite ways to be still is to listen to scripture and to let the words of truth pour over me, to soak into my weary soul and give me rest. So we then took a moment to still our hearts and listen to Psalm 23 in Spanish - twice. After our discussions about what the LORD was impressing on our hearts, and the excitement to add “listening” to the Bible into our days, we got to practice more stillness in our hearts through fellowship and a craft.

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Together we made small diamond art creations that could be turned into magnets. It was beautiful to see our students interacting with the Peruvian women and working through language barriers by sharing the “numero dos” gems and marveling at the creations.

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The Peruvian women from Concordia were so excited to share this evening with our team and very thankful for all the ways we got to partner with their church this year. Many of the ladies on our team have mentioned that evening as a highlight to their summer.

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When the Church comes together to fellowship - even when there are language differences - the Holy Spirit moves and beautiful things happen.

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Kelsie Becker

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