It is hard to stay silent when the world is against you. We normally want to defend ourselves, to stand up and fight. In fact, protection is one of the deepest wiring circuits in our brains. Safety bypasses and overrides many other circuits in the brain. When safety and security are so wired into our brain that they take over, we run on autopilot, taking whatever action we need to make it through.
The problem with this kind of autopilot is that sometimes it can get triggered when there is no real emergency. Because some current event is like a previous dangerous event, our brain may treat the current event with the same intensity that the previous event needed. There can be an overreaction in the present moment based on this past experience when safety and security was threatened.
David was in a difficult situation. His son Absalom was trying to kill him and take over the government. Absalom wanted to be king in his father’s place. He had poisoned the hearts of the people with lies about his father. He had raised their fear level in order to manipulate them. Their emotions were in charge. And emotions can change in a moment. Emotional energy can easily be shifted and redirected. And David knew this.
I think that is why right in the middle of this Psalm David wants to press the pause button. He wants to get them to slow down, to think about what they are trying to do. He knows they are running on adrenaline, and he wants to bring them back down to earth. He wants to ground them so they will make more righteous decisions.
So David wants them to relax. It is OK to feel fear. Fear is a God-given emotion. But to stay in fear, to live there, is not a good thing. David wants them to purposely slow down. He wants them to not sin when anger is in charge.
One of the biggest difficulties with getting anger out of the driver’s seat in your life is the multitude of voices that keep angry responses as the first and perhaps only response. But when the survival trigger has been pulled, it is almost impossible to stop. So David pulls their attention to when they are alone, in bed. God designed sleep as a time of restoration of balance in our brains. The chemical cocktail that was released as a result of the dangerous situation works its way through the system and our bodies and mind can settle back down into a healthier state. We return to homeostasis.
So David wants them to use the time in bed to quiet their hearts and minds. This requires purposefully focusing on the LORD rather than on the issues at hand. And order to do this we must learn to be silent. We must turn off the voices that push us to immediate action. We must examine the autonomic thought process, those thoughts that automatically arise and push us to do something. That is why we search our hearts. We look at the thoughts and take them apart, piece by piece. We don’t answer them or defend them. We just look at them. We are silent. We don’t stir them up. We just look at the video footage and let the tape roll.
We then take responsibility for our role in the activity. We might need to confess our sinful attitude and actions. Pride might have crept into our lives. Independence from the LORD might have taken hold. We offer a broken and contrite heart to the LORD. This is the sacrifice of the righteous person, the person in right relationship with the LORD. We step off the podium of importance and humbly take a knee before Him. We acknowledge His position of being in charge of our lives. We yield our will to His, our actions to His approval. We give up the illusion of control and surrender.
But we must remain silent in order to hear the LORD in those moments. We must quiet the voices and allow His voice to become the primary voice we hear. This requires trust. We must believe that He will protect us, sustain us, provide a way for us. If we are going to hear His voice, we must learn to be silent before Him.
The Arnold Journey 