“Imagine for a moment you are alone . . . no books, no Netflix, no one is home with you. The house is quiet, and so are you.
The longer you sit, the more you feel.
The silence is uncomfortable. An argument with your sister rises to the surface, the sarcastic comment your husband/boyfriend/friend made days ago still hurts, the discontent and discouragement you feel in motherhood slices open a shameful hole.
Longings begin to rise and so does guilt. Guilt over not being fully present with your people shames you, the loss of a loved one aches, the guilt for not being further along in your spiritual life stings.
The longer you sit, the more memories begin to rise, taking you back to years ago. The anger of your father makes your chest tighten. The neighborhood boy who teased you stirs up feelings of embarrassment. These complicated memories and uncomfortable feelings make you want to get up, grab your phone, reply to texts, or reach for a wine glass.
But what if, for a moment, you stay?
Imagine the very places you want to fix, avoid, power through, shout Bible verses at, stuff, or run from are actually the very way to wholeness. Imagine, instead of getting up to investigate what is under the couch or neurotically tidy the mail, you let all those feelings rise. You let them come up to the surface to breathe. You open your heart, talk to Jesus, and find love.
Imagine God is inviting you to follow these feelings. Imagine if you could stay with all those unfinished places within your soul and story and let them become your pathway to freedom.
If we’ve walked with Jesus long enough, we may feel a void inside of us. It is an uneasy place. One without words. We accepted Jesus into our hearts to escape the void. But it’s still there. We know it. It is there inside of us. It makes us feel guilty, ashamed, uncertain, and afraid.
When we withdraw, we abandon our very souls because we can’t make sense of our inner chaotic cell. Everything inside of us has become too much. We begin to believe that counseling or Jesus or communion just can’t resolve the ache we feel. We keep showing up to church or Bible study, but we slowly disengage our souls.
When we work harder, we battle on, grit our teeth and bear down. We read more books, follow more Christian women online, listen to more worship music, and silence all uncertainty. We control and contain and constantly lose ourselves in the need to keep up.
When we walk away, we give up on Jesus and the church. Our faith becomes a complex story from our past. Jesus just didn’t work out.
But what if we are in this place, not because we are doing something wrong, but because God is tending to the soil of our inner world? The process is hard because it means experiencing parts of our stories that make us cringe with painful self-awareness. But the most unlovely parts of us are the very places God is redeeming. God is moving closer.
Yes, stay. Stay where you most resist being.
You are exactly where you’re meant to be. Not fighting to get ahead and not giving up on ever overcoming, not closing the door on your faith entirely but there, right where you are. Simply opening. Simply accepting. Simply moving inward.
This is the sacred gift of staying.“
Copyright 2020, Bethany House Publishers. No part of this may be copied or used without permission. If interested, contact Anjuli Paschall.
Stay is a tender call to enter, to open, and to experience the echoing darkness buried beneath piles of mail and laundry and years of pain. This is a call to follow the fears and frustration to the unknown, frightening places inside. This is an invitation to let Jesus pull out a chair at the table of your soul and hear Him say, “Stay, you and your heart sit down.” Stay is about how Anjuli learned to become a little girl again, asking a big God if He could stay with someone small like her.
a promise + a prayer
Be sure to sign up for my new 5-day series called “a promise + a prayer” starting in May. Each day you will receive a note with a daily Bible promise and a simple prayer to help you stay close to God’s heart. Just a little something to help you pull away from all that is pulling on you in this season of uncertainty and overwhelming concern. And it’s free.
Stay, to not run away, mentally, emotionally or physically. To be present in the moment and know Who to turn to. I am a very reactive person with a sense of responsibility that is in overdrive now and a low tolerance for frustration. I’m not usually this bad, but sure could use some help.
“Stay” to me means – don’t run, I’ve got you, you’re safe! It means breathe. It’s an invitation to be taken care off by a God who wants you there with Him. It’s a choice- do I or don’t I.
Stay means to me – be still, quiet, listening. And that’s what I run from. So I have the tv on, using my laptop, avoidance.
To me stay means to be still, to breathe, to listen and absorb.
Stay to me means being still
Before the Lord and trusting Him.
STAY, reminds me of the song, I will linger, I will STAY, in Your presence day by day, in the light of Your glory and grace.
Great article! I want to read that book.
“Stay” When I think of this word, I’m reminded of when Jesus spoke words that many didn’t understand. He spoke some unsettling things that just didn’t sit right with many. They weren’t words that were expected. People expected to hear what they wanted to hear, things that would benefit their immediate needs and desires, not realizing His words were indeed those things. “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”” John 6:66-69 NKJV When I am tempted to stray due to fear or anxiety or anger or frustration, whatever the case, I realize “to whom shall I go?” He has the words of eternal life. He IS eternal life. My hope lies within Him and to not stay would be to miss out on eternal love and peace. Why would I leave for temporal satisfaction that doesn’t even truly satisfy, when I can stay and be fulfilled with the very Bread of life?
Stay to me means just that — I’ve stayed. It’s been 22 years since a painful marriage and divorce due to ex’s outside marital relationships and activities and that I’ve never remarried but wishing it had been so, feeling to old and wasted for it to ever happen, but I’ve stayed. Watching life go on all around me, I’ve stayed. Although 35 years have passed since the death of a fiancé who would never have had those outside activities, I’ve stayed. I’ve stayed through a lot more hurts and heartaches. I stayed to still believe in Christ and to know and learn through all this that He is Everything to me and All I need. I am alone but I stayed because He loves me more than anyone ever could.
To me,” stay” means to remain in mind, body and soul. I started thinking about the word in the context of someone saying “stay” to me. Which then takes on a whole different meaning. It now goes from being an act that I do, to being valued by someone who desires to be with me. I think a lot of times in life I get stuck in the mind frame of things I should be doing. But maybe I need to focus more on the reality that God values me and is pursuing and longing for a deeper relationship with me. He’s lovingly whispering to me “stay”
Stay… means… pain.
To be still and linger long enough to hear God’s voice speak what my heart needs to know.
To be still and breathe. To empty my head of all the noise.
Stay means perseverance in being present in the present
Thanks for this today Renee.
When I heard the word STAY I first heard ABIDE…which is my word for this year!
I just looked it up after I heard ABIDE – and in the Greek it means TO STAY or TO REMAIN.
I guess I heard Him correctly. 😉
Bless you!
Stay means to fight past the urge to run..
Stay to me means clinging to the Lord no matter what circumstances surround us.
Stay is when you follow Him no matter how much it does or doesn’t make sense to anyone, including yourself. It means seeking His will; it means staying steadfast in His path and continually seeking Him.
He may be calling you across the country, or across the world, or even just calling you to be faithful in your life as a homemaker (or whatever your chosen career).
He may be asking you to step away from your known into the unknown to stretch and grow you; He may be calling away from the life you are living into a new space and life so that someone doesn’t spend eternity in hell.
Or He may be asking one (you/me) to stay on a path that will honor and glorify Him and His purposes and Kingdom.
This past year has been just this lesson for me. I still don’t understand the call to stay in a place that is difficult, or why my life had to be turned upside down, but stay He says, so stay I’m trying (some days are easier than others, for sure).
I guess it depends on what’s going on as to what the word stay means to me. Sometimes, it means connection – keeping what I’ve had and don’t want to lose. It can mean not acting for fear of losing what I think / feel I need – what I’m used to. Staying can be both calming and stressful, releasing and restraining, protecting and traumatic – sometimes all of these all at once as contradictory as they are. But, no matter I’m going through (or staying in) God is there with me and that is what I need most.
I do not have something wonderful to state as the meaning of stay. My first thoughts were if someone said “Stay” to me, I would not leave, would not move. I would remain where I was and wait.
Stay means to remain in one place and to quietly wait. Stay is a peaceful, quiet place of contemplation.
Stay means to be still and and read and listen for the word of God. It means to give to God all the bad feelings that make you want to leave instead of stay.
Stay is to remain and notice your emotions or feelings and allowed it to surface, what it is trying to tell you.
Staying for me means to keep my eyes heart and mind focused on Christ. Often in my quiet time with God I sit and try to be still and listen -but my mind wanders away -especially to all the negativity and news reports. How I just want to stay with Him and bask in His love—stay with my head on Hos shoulder with the confidence that He’s got me and He’s got all of this.
Stay. To pause. To wait. To ponder all the what if’s, why’s, and how’s that we want to know about. To truly listen and wait to hear God and what He wants me to do and know that He is right here with me. Knowing that looking deep inside and really seeing things About me I haven’t wanted to or been able to see will lead me to freedom with Hid help.
I’m tired of hurting me and others.
Stay,not running. I am a runner,hiding, always,all my life. My momma taught me to run.
Stay for me is a calling i have been receiving lately from ABBA. still so very hard to stay. I don’t physically run anymore, but my mind strays until He calls me back, diana, stay
STAY… Stay in the hurt, stay in the pain, stay in the shame, stay in the fear, stay in the anger, as you give all of these things to the Lord stay until he tells you you can go. Healing is hard and it’s a process. We must walk through it with the Lord and not try to climb around it or go under it or numb ourselves so that we don’t have to feel it… And I am learning that after God heals some of these things he may let you travel on for a few years but then he will bring you back to complete the process and that is where I am at right now… I am most definitely buy in this book…
Stay. Stand strong, tall and yield to Him even in our weakness. Wait for Him to do His work in us and know what He thinks is best for us.
1 You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God. 2 You’re blessed when you follow his directions, doing your best to find him.” Psalm 119:1-2.
I have been studying that lately and trying to live by it.
To me…the word “Stay” most resignates in our ministry as pastor of a church plant. We will celebrate our church’s 5 year anniversary on May 4. We have encountered countless blessings, miracles and a great deal of spiritual warfare and struggle. I have been hurt by some of those closest to my heart. Some days, every fiber in my soul says to go..and yet, God says to “stay”. And trust and love and believe..His grace is indeed sufficient. To stay still and let Him be God. ❤️ I so needed this today.
Through this new season Stay has been, “sit with Me and wait awhile, listen for My voice, lets have some time to cover what you’ve read”…..My husband and I read a devotion and pray before he goes off to work. Then I read, right now Im reading “when the enemy strikes” by Charles Stanley. WOW! Take time sisters. And Stay..our Savior wants to speak to us????
I think to stay is to exhibit courage, to love, to obey God even in the most difficult. Too often I want to run away because it hurts so bad to stay. I believe God uses the moments where I listen to Him and stay to grow and transform me to become more like Christ. Sounds like an incredible book!
My gut reaction to stay or be still is punishment. Growing up with a father who could only deal with calm and unemotional, I spent a lot of time in my room until I could “calm down”.
Be still and know that I am God, has been my reluctant life verse. It pops up everywhere! I used to only focus on the Be still part and I would say I wish I could. But, it also say and KNOW that I am God.
So, stay to me means staying with him long enough to get to know him as a trusted friend. Staying in my feelings long enough for him to heal, redeem and restore me where I am cracked and broken.
I am in the process of learning how to stay with something the Lord is showing me instead of running to food to stuff things down. For me it is sitting and listening. “Be still and know that I am God.” Stay is being still for me.
The word “stay” first made me think of not running away, and then to abide in Him. To stay, then, is to not go somewhere but rather remain.
I love that!
To me, stay means to wait and trust in the middle of what’s is swirling around you…or in you. I think of abide and dwell. It’s a vulnerable place of trust and being okay.
What does STAY mean to me? When I first heard the question I immediately thought of this verse:
“Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalms 46:10 KJV
Two years ago I had a major stroke. I am 68 years old now. And I found myself growing closer to the Lord because I had taken and had more time to STAY. The Lord still blessed me with allowing me to preserve many functions I had before the stroke. But He knew I would be
PRAYing more and STAYing more.
I enjoyed your article very much, Renee! And you perfectly described when it’s all too much!
Thank you
:Donna
Donna, you have been here before… staying at home, staying close to Jesus. I have found there are blessings hidden in this hard season and pandemic and having more time to stay with God is one of them for me. So glad my post encouraged you today.
Stay means to abide, linger, be at home.
I love that phrase “be at home.”
I love the idea of staying. But I’m a runner. Even at 50 years of age, I’m still running. I have gone through times of sitting still to journal my thoughts and feelings, and even doing art journaling, which i like better. But it’s hard for me to be consistent for long.
I long to experience the staying that stops my running. Where I genuinely feel at rest, in my mind, heart, and spirit. The kind of rest that Jesus promises in Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”. ???
I’m not a runner, but I am a gardener so I like to be outside as much as possible. I recently heard Anjuli talk about this and she said “staying isn’t so much about sitting still, but being still and present in our emotions or uncomfortable thought processes with God instead of running from them.” Staying with him even when we’re moving but not avoiding the hard conversations He’s prompting our hearts to have with him. I do that a lot while I’m outside working in my yard and I hear from him so clearly in those times. So, you can even “stay” present with Him when you’re running. 🙂
Stay to me means always stay close to GOD know mater want your going through Stay in his word stay in his presence. Always stay with God in your heart
Stay for me = Surrendering my will and my way to allow God to move in His.
Yes, that too.
For me stay is what you do…God has allowed many trials in my life and for me I’ve always chosen fight over flight. It is who I am. However I can’t take the credit for that ability. God is my strength and refuge and without him for me staying would never be possible
When I’m faced with fight or flight, often times my heart wants to take flight for sure. It takes a lot of courage to stay present, but yes He supplies what we need.
Yes, I have had to stay in my room at a senior citizen facility. Dealing with my sugar/food addiction has not been fun, but I had already been working on it. This time of being in my room alone has forced the issue, but once I yelled, screamed, pounded on the bed, and did some journaling it has become easier. A lady where I live can leave her little dog on its leash and walk 50 feet away to go get her mail. The dog stays right where she left it and sniffs around. Another lady can tell her little dog to stay and walk 200 or 300 feet down the hall. It never moves until she tells it to come. She told us that she took several months to teach the dog to stay and gave him treats as he learned. I think God trains us to stay as we grow closer to Him and YES He gives us treats along the way. God Bless, Laurel
I love that analogy Laurel. It does take time to learn to stay, and God does reward those times when we do. 🙂 Thank you for sharing. Praying this time will be a big breakthrough for you with the Lord and sugar. In Jesus’ name amen.
I can’t help but think about our dog, Victor, and how hard it was at times for him to obey the “stay” command. He would sit with his tail wagging furiously and his expressive, expectant eyes looking up to me saying “when – when – when”. But because he trusted me, he obeyed. Moreover, he wanted to please us with his behavior. But there were those times when we turned our back, and he would lurch as if by turning around, we had given him permission to go. I’m learning that STAY is the opposite of GO. STAY means God either wants to do something instead of me, for me or to me. It all comes down to truly realizing how much He loves me. Once I get that, the trust follows. Just like Victor did. He was a rescue, so it took all of us months to develop that trust relationship. Victor died last month, and we miss him terribly. He was a blessing in many ways. Something else, God knew we needed.
I’m a big dog-lover so you’re speaking my language. I love how God showed you His ways through Victor.
Im going to think about this next time I’m working on training our two dogs, So far they’ve learned sit, lay down and beg, but I have not worked on STAY with them yet. Trust and obey. It’s hard but good.
One aspect of the word “stay” (to me) is that of quickly returning. Sometimes when someone comes to visit, and she gets up to leave, when I tell her “Stay longer,” she sits back down. Her intentions might have been to leave, but when asked, she stayed. I believe that’s what the Lord asks of me. No doubt, He desires I never leave His side, but He knows I’m prone to wander. When I get up to leave, His tender, gentle urging asks me to “stay.” So often, it’s in those very moments that I find the peace and the answer to many questions I so desperately sought. The place where I am when I return doesn’t matter: home, chair, church, outside — He is always in the same place, always right next to me. He never wanders; I do. My husband, who has been with the Lord for four years now, used to say, “God NEVER does anything TO us, always FOR us.” How can I possibly neglect staying with so loving a Heavenly Father? My relationship to Him is my primary motivation for staying.
Renee,rel
Stay means being still. Not running to Netflix, TV, computers, etc. Just being alone with God & snuggling up with Him. Listening to His still small voice calm you. No more noise or worldly distractions. Just you & God in a super quiet environment. It involves the whole body, We must tune out the noisy world & tune into God. Getting relaxed/calm to just sit & wait on a loving, caring God. He will get us out of any trial or tribulation we find ourselves in. Don’t run away from problems but allow the problems to bring you closer to God’s arms. Think of it as snuggling with a loving father who deeply cares for you not matter the situation or your past!!
Blessings 🙂
That blesses me, and it’s something I’m trying to do. To be still and hear his whisper instead of running to food or tv. Blessings ??
I think to stay means to wait well, trusting God will be faithful and being with Him in the meantime.
“Stay” to me means to Abide with Him
Stay means growing roots to me. I have made myself stay where I am for the past three years and grow roots in my place of service (my job and ministry) and in my city. There have been endless amounts of change the last eight years so this has proven a good decision for me. I am now at the place where I see weaknesses. Stay means staying even though everything is not perfect.:) Thanks for the opportunity to win!
As believers, we are to stay…to persevere in the midst of our challenging circumstances as we abide in our sovereign God’s purposes for our eternal good. We may not understand His ways, but we can trust Him to faithfully do His immeasurably more in and through our lives!
What does “stay” mean to me? I stay at home more than most folks usually do because I have MCS that trigger debilitating migraines. This “stay at home” order hasn’t changed much of anything in my life, other than that folks can no longer come visit me. The idea of the Lord saying “stay” to me, as in “stay in my arms” hadn’t really occurred to me ’til I read about it here. I need to ponder this more. . . .
Stay…don’t quit. Keep moving forward no matter how hard. Keep getting back up.
My instinct is to run away when confrontations occur or disappointments run over me. By either physical escape or a mental one. It’s so painful and hard to stay sometimes.
But oh it is worth it. My greatest blessings have come because I stayed.
He stays. That gives me Hope and reason enough to stay. ❤❤
How amazing is our God! I spent all day yesterday pondering these exact thoughts. I ended the day praying that God would unpack the layers of my soul and show me what needs to be healed. It is going to be painful to dig through all the wounds life has put in my soul but it is necessary “surgery”! I have to get to the bottom of the lies that I have believed about myself over the years. It will take pain to get healing. This concept of “stay” is a perfect follow up to my thoughts and I think it is confirmation of my next steps. It is time to sit in His way and let Him heal me and make me whole. Thank you!
What a beautiful encouragement! Thank you for sharing this. This weekend I accepted God’s invitation to stay…asking Him to help me accept my failures, to lovingly look at my cringey self with His grace and to find the freedom that has been a step away for so long. This morning I woke up lighter. Learning to sit with the chest crushing emotions is hard but with God, I’m determined to stay. To sit in His presence and heal in order to help others in a way I’ve always longed to be helped.
I’ve been feeling God speak to me during this “stay at home” order, saying to “stay calm and trust Me!” I have a daughter who is a nurse, and has been working with Covid patients, and my husband is an essential employee in a hospital, where he is possibly exposed to Covid on a daily basis. But my heart is calmed when I continue to seek Him, and trust His promises. Today I read Jeremiah 29:11, remembering the truth that He has plans for my future that are good! I will stay in His truth!
Thank you!!
Bobbie,
I understand your fears. My hubby & I both work in hospitals. He does CT & has scanned several positive patients. But we are trusting that God will keep us healthy & safe during this time. Praying God can calm your fears & bring you closer to Himself. Jeremiah 29:11 is my life verse. Love knowing that He has our best interest at heart!!
Blessings 🙂