Jan and I were invited to a conference where I was one of the speakers. The conference host put us up in a beautiful Airbnb with a swimming pool. After a long day of meetings, I wanted to unwind. I donned my swimsuit and grabbed a towel and headed to the pool.

The lights of the swimming pool made the water seem like I was stepping into a liquid emerald. I sat quietly on the pool steps with the water up to my chin not wanting to send out any ripples. The smooth surface of the water was like polished glass. At one point, I slipped underwater and began to swim into the silent depths. My hearing became muffled insulating me from the sounds of the outside world. At the bottom of the pool, I stopped, suspended like I was floating in a gravity-free space module. No outside noise or surface movement was able to interfere with the quiet or the sensation of weightlessness I was experiencing.

The Lord tells us to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The word “still” has been defined as sinking down or relaxing just like my swimming pool experience. It can also be translated to slacken a grip, to let something drop and move on. We go into the depths of intimacy with God to make decisions that will change our lives once we return to the surface.

To “be” as in “Be still…” is something that requires a choice. In our spiritual lives, the still water of our soul can only be experienced in the depths of intimacy with God. It’s a choice we make like the choice I made to enter the swimming pool. This is a deep place where we access what is not available on the surface of life.

Intimacy with God is not the absence of our problems or worries. It’s a place where, in the stillness of His presence, we can let go of the things that make our lives heavy and fearful. The intimacy experienced in the depths of God’s presence loosens our grip on those things we brought to an intimate encounter with Him. 

When we return to the surface, what happened in the depths of our experience of intimacy with God allowed us to leave behind what had previously weighed us down and caused us to be overwhelmed with fear and worry. The experience will reorder our priorities helping us discern what it was that tried to rob us of our hope. In the depths of God’s presence is where we will make choices to never again pick up those things that stumbled our faith and clouded the vision of our future.