When I Stand on What Cannot Be Shaken

by Holly Swafford

He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.

Psalm 62:6

There’s just something about the beach. There’s nothing like the quiet that surrounds you when all you can hear is the continuous crash of ocean water. It’s like chaos and peace become one in the waves. I like to stand right in them as far out as I can go without getting knocked over. It’s an awesome feeling.

But there’s quite another feeling that comes just as quickly when the waves begin to move out. It’s a little discomforting when the water flows away from the shore - leaving a pile of swirling foam and taking all the sand from under your feet. If you’re not careful, it can cause you to completely lose your balance and topple over into the moving tide. There’s nothing solid to stand on and the sand is moving quicker than you ever thought it could.

Life hits like the waves sometimes. Everything is going great. In fact, things couldn’t be going better. And then, out of the blue, waves change directions. The ground is taken from under you, and you have nothing left to stand on. You’ve been shaken. Caught in the undertow.

And when the waves come, suddenly, we find everything we depended on swiftly shifting under our feet. If we’re not careful, we lose our balance and fall right on our face. The sand felt good for a little while, but it could not hold you up against the tide. You realize then what things in life are shaky and what things are solid.

Hannah Whitall Smith has expressed this thought so well that I wanted to share some of her words here:

“When everything in our lives and experience is shaken that can be shaken, and only that which cannot be shaken remains, we are brought to see that God only is our rock and our foundation, and we learn to have our expectation from Him alone…

And we, if we will but let God have His way with us, may come to the same place so that neither the fret and tear of the little things of life, nor its great and heavy trials, can have power to move us from the peace that passeth all understanding, which is declared to be the portion of those who have learned to rest only on God.”

There is a sweetness that comes in times when we realize that God is all we have to lean on. We truly lean on Him, as we always should, but can’t when all the lesser things of life are in the way. He becomes our Rock once again. All the things we thought were so important do not matter like they once did. We realize again what we must value. The unshakable before the shaken. The Rock and not the shifting sand.

You may be in the glory of the moment when life is going beautifully. You’re dazed by the wonder of life’s peaks. Don’t forget to stand on the Unshakable. Because the waves will eventually wash out from under you. But if your feet are resting firmly on the Rock, you will find that you have One to stand on that will hold. No force that comes against you can knock you over. No fear can drive you from your stay. Nothing can shake you.

His greatest promise is that He never leaves. He’s there to pick us up and hold us when our world falls apart. At times, it’s His hands that shake our world so that we realize that He is the only thing that cannot be shaken.

So let us put our trust in the Unshakable One. Stand on Him through good and bad times.

Depend on Him. Expect from Him. Hope in Him. Rest in Him.

Even when we can’t trace Him in the storm, He’s there for us to stand on. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other in blind and loving trust. In the words of John Greenleaf Whittier: “Nothing before, nothing behind: The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”

Everything around me may be shaken, but I cannot fall when I am standing on the Unshakable.

Standing on the promises that cannot fail!

When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,

by the living Word of God I shall prevail,

standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises I cannot fall,

list'ning ev'ry moment to the Spirit’s call,

resting in my Savior as my all in all,

standing on the promises of God.