Everyone Needs a Slack Tide by Dennis Cummins
Everyone Needs a Slack Tide
Pastor Dennis Cummins
Pastor & Author Dennis Cummins is a 3rd generation pastor and has been in ministry for over two decades, ministering in worship, the Word, and prayer. He is the Senior Pastor of ExperienceChurch.tv® in Puyallup, WA. Though located in the most un-churched county in the nation, ExperienceChurch.tv® is a growing, thriving church.
With the mission to “aggressively save and disciple all that we can”, Pastor Dennis has led the church through changes and improvements to forge a new identity for Experience Church.tv® and to create an experience that is applicable to our culture. Read the rest of his bio.
“We shouldn’t choose to live not for the now, but for what is going to last for eternity.”
Do you know God or do you only know of God, or about a god? There’s a big difference. In Psalms 46:10 it says, “Be still and know that I am God.” We have been charged as Christians to be still and know God. This is not a suggestion or an option as a disciple of Christ. This is God Himself speaking to us to take some time to get to know Him—His heart, His values, His Character, His Judgment and His love. According to the Barna survey, we can conclude that most church-goers don’t see any benefit in getting to know God let alone making any sacrifices for Him.
One of the biggest hindrances I see for people who are interested in knowing God is that they have no silence in their life. That equates to having no time for God because they are just too busy. I have to ask, what are we so busy doing—answering our cell phones, checking email, sending text messages and running to the store? I’ve never seen a day where parents indulge their kids so much. “Oh, little Johnny’s got practice, and little Suzie’s got dance lessons,” never giving any thought to the importance of “silence” in their lives. They’re living their lives through their kids without any infrastructure on which to build a foundation on. It’s all about living for the moment.
This is why God is calling us to have more silence in our lives, so we can truly know that He is God. This is why God is calling us to “Be still and know that I am God.” “Still” in Hebrew literally means: slack tide; that which has a pause, not active or busy. When I think of slack tide, I am reminded of the power of the ocean. It is an amazing creation from God, and I have such a respect for it. I used to be a commercial diver many years ago and still scuba dive on a regular basis. I recently went to the San Juan Islands in Washington State to spear fish for Lingcod. If you know anything about scuba diving in the San Juan Islands, you understand the importance of studying the tide charts. Much of the Puget Sound waters flow through the San Juan Islands causing massive tidal changes and heavy currents. If you dive there you want to be sure you dive during slack tide.
When I was diving commercially in the San Juan Islands, we didn’t have the luxury of only diving during slack tides. Many times we would have to go into the water no matter what the current or tide exchange was like. We would put on extra weight, sometimes up to 140 pounds to compensate for a four or five knot current. We needed that much weight to get our footing so we could work. Even still, with some of those currents, we would be completely incapacitated and would have to come up. Some of the divers never made it back.
There are many people who don’t have any “slack tide” in their life. They don’t have the time or see the benefit. They are just too busy to stop and think about it. They are too wrapped up thinking about their ulcer or fighting insomnia because they can’t shut off the stress in their life. They lie in bed at night with their spouse dreaming of ways to get them out of their life. They take their home problems to work with them and take their work problems home with them. They are always on edge, always stressed-out, always late and always have somewhere else to be and something else to do. They are driven by the currents of society and feel like victims being swept away by the cultural surge. They are caught up in the currents of life, and just to keep their feet on the ground they have to add on more weight—more financial commitments, luxuries, fun, worldliness and fleshly passions. They become incapacitated under the currents of their life and the Devil draws them down deeper and deeper until they are out of control.
This is why it is so vital that we as Christians have “slack tides” in our lives. We have to have moments of silence to hear our Heavenly Father. This is the only way we can really know God. We have to realize that God did not design us to go without moments of silence. If we live without them, we live with stress, fear, poverty, lack; we put up with sickness and disease and go without sleep. We push ourselves to the brink of collapse. Jesus said in Matthew 11:30 (New International Reader’s Version) 30 “Serving me is easy, and my load is light.” He is trying to convey to us that His plan gives us life. His way is to slow down and take moments of silence to gain insight and wisdom from God. God says in Proverbs 13:15 (New King James Version) 15 “Good understanding gains favor, But the way of the unfaithful is hard.” “Hard” can be translated rough or to strain. This is like swimming upstream in a heavy current. I know what tough means. Tough is wearing 140 pounds of lead trying to work in a five or six knot current with a 300 foot air supply line. It is almost impossible to navigate and make headway under such pressure. You can only move side to side until you reach the end of your hose. Then you can’t move. You either come up or drown.
This is true of our society. It is hard for them to make any headway in life, so they just move side to side. They are adapting to the pressures of life by using another distraction, toy or relationship to make things better. Yet they’re almost out of hose and will soon have to make a decision—come up out of their humanism and depend on the Spirit of God or drown in their sin. That is why He is tells us “Be still and know that I am God.” Even the ocean, in its great splendor, will pause four times each and every day. God wants us all to have some type of “slack tide,” moments of silence, in our day in order to hear His voice.
Website: http://www.intothesilence.org
