The Mirror of the Word and other works by C.E. White can be purchased on her website, cewhitebooks.com or on Amazon.

“Stop striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted on the earth.”

—Psalm 46:10

As believers, we can stop bustling anxiously from one thing to the next, stop trying to control our circumstances, and stop worrying about everything . . . and we can do it all in confidence of our God.

The worldly phrase we all know for this is to “stop and smell the roses,” but the impact of that statement pales compared to how God puts it: “Stop striving and know that I am God.”

Sometimes there aren’t any roses. Sometimes everything around us stinks. Sometimes stopping to smell the roses just reminds us that—right now—we can only see thorns.

But God is always there in his fully present, all–powerful god–ness. No matter what we see around us, he is Immanuel—God with us.

And no rose has power over the circumstances of our lives.

We could be in the middle of a rose garden, but it might bring, at best, only a few moments of peace before the difficult realities all around us take over our thoughts once again.

But God is still God no matter what. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He is still in control. We can look around at the roses or the stink and the thorns and know that he is working in and through it all.

Instead of striving, we can rest in who he is—our fully good and loving, omnipotent God—and the rest, peace, and confidence we have in him will be a testimony of his goodness and sovereignty to those around us.

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