Day 3: Rediscovering Your True Self in the Quiet

"Be still, and know that I am God." — Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

When you finally carve out a pocket of silence, you might expect immediate peace.
And sometimes that does happen. But often, silence also brings everything you've been avoiding to the surface:

• Old emotions. Grief. Anger. Fear. Wounds you thought you'd outpaced.
• Big questions. About your calling, your relationships, your deepest longings.
• God’s gentle whisper. Often not a booming voice, but a soft nudge—a memory illuminated, a Scripture freshly alive.

It can feel unsettling at first. But don’t be afraid. This isn’t failure. It’s an invitation.

Saint Teresa of Avila, the 16th century nun, wrote,

"It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are."

The tragedy, she reminds us, is not that God is silent—but that we rarely slow down long enough to hear Him, or even to know our own hearts.

Silence is offered to us as a spiritual gift to cultivate because it becomes the place where we can rediscover the true self God created—the beloved one, hidden beneath the layers of striving and survival.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart," David prayed in Psalm 139:23 (NIV). In silence, we offer God that same permission—to search, to reveal, to heal.

In your silence before the Lord, you might rediscover strengths you forgot, gifts you've buried, or dreams you dismissed as foolish.

You might meet Jesus more closely than you ever have before.

Silence isn’t about retreating forever. It’s about reentering the noisy world with a deeper soul—a soul that knows you are deeply loved. A soul who understands more about God's purpose for creating you.

Silence is an important spiritual discipline and one that is needed in any "holy hustle detox", because the world doesn't just need louder voices and larger platforms. It desperately needs deeper, more authentic ones. This is attained through a life of devotion to God sprinkled with seasons, or moments, of silence.

Reflection:

In your next moment of quiet, instead of rushing through discomfort, ask: "God, what part of me—or You—are You inviting me to rediscover?"

Prayer:

I am still, and I know that You are God. Teach me to hear You in the silence so that I may know You more. In Your name, I pray.