The Power of Being Still
- Kim Levings
- Feb 10
- 8 min read
Series: True Leadership Superpowers - Week 2
Last week, we explored the power of surrender—releasing our white-knuckled grip on control and discovering strength in yielding to God. This week, we're diving into another counterintuitive power that culture dismisses but Christ exemplified: stillness.
The Tyranny of Constant Motion
You know the feeling. The treadmill is moving, and you're running just to stay in place. Your calendar is a Tetris game of back-to-back meetings. Your to-do list breeds faster than you can check items off. You haven't had a truly uninterrupted hour in weeks—maybe months.
And somewhere deep down, you wear this busyness like a badge of honor.
When someone asks how you're doing, you respond with "busy" or "slammed" or "crazy right now"—and there's a strange pride in that answer. Because in our culture, busyness signals importance. Constant motion suggests productivity. A full calendar means you matter.
But here's the trap: we've confused activity with effectiveness. We've mistaken motion for progress. We've convinced ourselves that if we stop moving, everything will fall apart.
So we don't stop. We can't stop. We've become leaders trapped on a treadmill we don't know how to turn off.
The Cultural Lie
Our hustle culture has sold us a lie: that relentless activity equals success. That the leader who works the longest hours, answers emails at midnight, and never takes a real break is the one who wins. But what are we winning, exactly?
Burnout? Shallow decision-making? A life where we're so busy doing that we've forgotten how to simply be?
The truth is that we have to be comfortable with being alone with ourselves, comfortable with doing nothing, comfortable with confronting those parts of ourselves we prefer to numb, hide, ignore. The “tyranny of the urgent” can also be a mask for the subliminal pursuit of power. That’s a lie. And that’s a huge distraction that keeps turning that urgency wheel.
The culture tells us that stillness is wasted time. That pausing is falling behind. That rest is for the weak or the uncommitted. That if you're not hustling, you're not hungry enough.
The Kingdom tells us something radically different.
Be Still and Know
"Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
This isn't a suggestion for your next vacation. It's not an invitation to eventually, someday, when things calm down, maybe try to relax a little.
It's a command. And it's directly tied to knowing God.
The Hebrew word for "be still" here—raphah—means to let go, to release, to cease striving. It carries the sense of putting down your weapons, dropping your defenses, stopping your frantic activity.
Apostle Paul writing to the Ephesians, reminds them of the importance of wearing God’s armor every day. But note that he begins by pointing out that when you are done “doing” – just stand. i.e. be still. “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
Here's what this means for leaders: you cannot truly know God in the frenzy. You cannot hear His voice when you're drowning in noise. You cannot discern His direction when you're sprinting from one thing to the next without pause.
Stillness isn't about doing nothing. It's about creating the space where you can actually perceive what God is doing.
The God of the Whisper
After Elijah's dramatic showdown with the prophets of Baal, after calling down fire from heaven, after the incredible victory—he ran. Afraid and exhausted, he collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die. (1 Kings 18)
Then came one of the most important moments in Scripture for leaders who are addicted to motion.
God told Elijah to stand on the mountain because the Lord was about to pass by. First came a great and powerful wind that tore the mountains apart. But the Lord was not in the wind. Then came an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then came fire. But the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire—a gentle whisper.
And there was the Lord.
How many of us are so busy chasing the wind, the earthquake, and the fire that we completely miss the whisper? How many divine promptings have we overlooked because we were too busy, too distracted, too in motion to hear?
God often speaks in the stillness. Not always. Not exclusively. But consistently enough that if we never get still, we're going to miss a lot of what He's saying.
What Stillness Actually Produces
Let's get practical. What do leaders gain from stillness?
Discernment. When you're constantly reacting, you make shallow decisions based on immediate pressure rather than deeper wisdom. Stillness creates the space for discernment—the ability to perceive what's actually happening beneath the surface and what God might be saying about it. My biggest mistakes and bad choices were always made under pressure, without consulting God.
Perspective. When you're nose-to-the-grindstone, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Stillness lets you zoom out. You can see patterns you missed in the day-to-day grind. You can evaluate whether you're still heading in the right direction or if you've drifted. The practice of reflecting every day, considering decisions, responses to others, how you handled a conflict – all help you get in touch with that deeper part of yourself – the place where the Holy Spirit can guide your next day.
Renewed Energy. This seems obvious, but we forget: you can't pour from an empty cup. Stillness isn't just spiritual—it's physiological. Your body and mind need rest to function at their best. The leader who never stops will eventually stop functioning well.
Creative Breakthroughs. Innovation rarely happens in the hustle. The best ideas often emerge in the margin, in the pause, in the shower, on the walk, in the quiet moment when your brain finally has permission to wander and wonder. If you haven’t yet introduced a creative pursuit of any sort – maybe now is the time. It doesn’t matter what you choose – just find something that you can engage in to give your brain the gift.
Hearing God. This is the foundation of everything else. If you're leading a kingdom-aligned organization but you can't hear the King, you're navigating blind. Stillness is how we tune our ears to His frequency.
Activity vs. Productivity vs. Fruitfulness
Here's a framework that's changed how I think about my time:
Activity is motion. It's checking boxes, attending meetings, staying busy. You can be incredibly active and accomplish very little.
Productivity is getting things done. It's output, efficiency, results. You can be highly productive and still miss what matters most.
Fruitfulness is producing what God intended. It's alignment with kingdom purposes. It's the outcome that comes from abiding in Christ, not just working hard.
Jesus said, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine." (John 15:4)
Notice what produces fruit: remaining. Abiding. Staying connected. Not striving, not hustling, not frantically doing more.
Stillness is how we abide. It's how we stay connected to the vine. And connection to the vine is what produces lasting fruit—not our relentless activity.
The Fear That Stops Us
Let's name the fear that keeps so many leaders in perpetual motion: the fear that if we stop, everything falls apart.
If I take a real Sabbath, the business will suffer.
If I'm not constantly available, I'll lose opportunities.
If I pause, my team will think I'm slacking.
If I rest, my competitors will get ahead.
These fears feel legitimate. But they reveal something deeper: we've made ourselves indispensable. We've built systems that require our constant intervention. We've become the bottleneck.
And honestly? That's not leadership. That's control masquerading as leadership.
True leaders build systems and develop people so well that things can run without their constant presence. They create space for stillness not by abandoning their responsibilities but by leading in a way that doesn't require them to be everything to everyone at all times.
If your leadership requires you to never be still, you're not leading sustainably. You're on a path to burnout, and you're preventing your team from growing.
The Stillness Practice
So how do we actually do this? How do we build stillness into our leadership rhythms in a world that never stops demanding our attention?
Not just vacation. Stillness can't be something you do once a year when you finally get away. It needs to be woven into the fabric of your daily and weekly rhythms.
Daily practices:
Start your day with a period of silence before you check your phone (start with at least 10 minutes)
Take a midday pause—a walk, a moment of prayer, a genuine break
End your workday with reflection rather than collapsing into numbing distractions
Weekly practices:
Honor a real Sabbath (yes, a full day—this is resistance against hustle culture)
Schedule margin in your calendar as aggressively as you schedule meetings
Protect time for strategic thinking, not just tactical doing
Decision-making practice:
Before making major decisions, build in stillness
Sleep on it isn't old-fashioned advice—it's wisdom
The best decisions often emerge after we've stopped trying to force them
Sabbath as Resistance
Keeping Sabbath in our culture is a radical act of resistance.
It says: I am not a machine.
It says: My worth isn't determined by my productivity.
It says: I trust God more than I trust my hustle.
It says: The world will not collapse if I rest for a day.
Sabbath is active trust. It's a weekly practice of surrender. It's a declaration that God is God and you are not. And for leaders specifically, Sabbath models something crucial for your team: that rest is not a weakness but a strength. That a sustainable pace matters more than a sprint that ends in burnout.
The Power Hidden in the Pause
Here's the paradox: the leaders who pause regularly are often more effective than those in constant motion.
Why? Because they're leading from fullness rather than frenzy. They're making decisions from a place of clarity rather than chaos. They're hearing God's voice instead of just the noise of urgent demands.
Stillness isn't downtime. It's preparation. It's strategy. It's the space where God does some of His best work in us and through us.
The power of being still isn't about doing less. It's about doing what matters from a place of deep connection to the Source of all true power.
What Matters
God cares less about the business you build, and more about how you build it.
God cares less about who you hire, and more about how you treat them.
God cares less about how you ethically finance your business, and more about how you steward it.
Leaders overlook the fact that God has often either called, or allowed, them to lead where they are. Who you are becoming, and the state of your heart, mind, soul is what matters to God.
Your Challenge This Week
Choose one:
Guard one Sabbath day this week. A full 24 hours where you cease from work and practice trust.
Build in daily stillness. Even 15 minutes of silence and solitude every morning this week.
Create space before your next big decision. Don't make it in the rush. Give yourself stillness to discern.
Stop running. Get still. Listen for the whisper.
That's where the real power is.
This is part two of our February series on Finding the Right Power. Next week: The Power of Stewardship.
Looking for a high-accountability leadership community?
LeaderPrint, a Christ-centered peer group for Kingdom-aligned leaders is launching on February 20th in South Africa. (if you're in the USA, stay tuned—we're hoping to launch there later this year.)
Shoot me an email if you'd like recommendations of a Kingdom-aligned leader community near you.
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