RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Don't just do something; stand there.

Better yet, kneel there. Be there.

It's easy to switch the verbs in the old, accusatory challenge to do something -- anything -- rather than stand around. Lots of preachers, speakers and writers invert the familiar phrase to encourage us to slow down and be still. But it's hard for us action-oriented Americans to stop and just be. Inaction, even for a moment, seems lazy, unproductive, even weird. We should be multitasking.

Stillness? It's a little scary.

Yet stillness is where we meet God. To be His heart, His hands and His voice -- IMB's overarching theme for 2012 -- we must lay aside the sound and fury of our ceaseless activities, our personal priorities and our very selves to encounter Him. We need His heart to make a difference in the world, not our divided, selfish hearts. His hands do the healing, not our powerless hands. His voice cuts to the core of searching souls, not our meaningless chatter.

"… If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me," Jesus says. "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it" (Matthew 16:24, 25).

There's plenty of positive action cited in that statement: come, take up, follow, save. Before any of that can happen, however, first there's a negative action, an "inaction," so to speak: deny self. Continued...