We live in a loud world. Loud with sound, loud with opinions, loud with expectations, loud with busy schedules, loud with thoughts racing through our heads, and loud with heartache.
For those of us who are truly seeking after God, it can be hard to hear Him above all the noise.
Elijah, an Old Testament prophet, was trying to hear God’s voice after running for his life in fear of Queen Jezebel, an evil woman who is actually listed as the most evil woman in all of the Bible. She is bad news, and now she’s turned her attention to Elijah.
It all started when Elijah taunts the worshippers of Baal into a showdown, and God shows up in a mighty way. Fire rains down from heaven the minute Elijah calls out to God while the priests of Baal shout and dance and cut themselves for hours and get no response from their god.
After this powerful demonstration of Yahweh’s strength and power, Jezebel wants Elijah dead. He runs away and hides in the desert, gets food from angels that sustains him for 40 days, and then goes up to the holy place of Mount Horeb.
Elijah needed to hear from God. He was tired, alone, felt like he was the only believer on the whole earth that still followed God (he was wrong about that, but that’s what fear can do to us), and he wanted to die. Then God spoke:
The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
1 Kings 19:11-12 (NIV)
God wasn’t in the noise - God was in the quiet. And I love that the Bible says it wasn’t just any kind of whisper, it was a “gentle” whisper.
Think about the intimacy of a whisper. Number 1, you have to be extremely close to someone to hear it. You have to block out all the noise around you to understand what is being said. And most of all, you have to trust someone at a deep level to receive the tenderness of a gentle whisper.
A whisper is intimate.
And a gentle whisper is even more delicate.
As I look back on my own faith journey, the most powerful times I have heard God’s voice have been in those moments when I have gotten away from the noise, settled my heart, cried out before Him, and then simply listened.
It’s not easy to settle into silence, though, is it. Our lives are filled with activity. Our phones go off at all hours of the day and night, and it can seem impossible to find silence, the absence of sound. It's even harder to find absolute silence, the very presence of God.
But God calls us to solitude and silence, to those intimate moments where we can hear His “still small voice.” And it’s a practice we can choose to enter into to draw us closer to the heart of our loving Father. Too often we come before Him with our list of needs and desires, but we forget to give God a chance to answer, to speak life into the things on our hearts, to offer His hope and healing.
There’s a great book called “Invitation to Solitude and Silence” by Ruth Haley Barton. I read it years ago during an extremely hard season of life when I needed to feel God near me, I mean REALLY feel Him near. One quote about the book says:
“The beauty of a true invitation is that we really do have a choice about embarking on this adventure. God extends the invitation, but he honors our freedom and will not push himself where he is not wanted. Instead, he waits for us to respond from the depths of our desire.”
This practice transformed my spiritual journey. It was when I was settled into the silence that I experienced those awe-inspiring, life-changing, never-to-be-forgotten whispers. Gentle, intimate moments of God speaking life into my weary soul.
It’s a choice to enter into solitude and silence. It takes discipline, and I’m choosing to enter into this discipline again as I dust the book off and say yes to the invitation to draw closer to the heart of God.
I encourage you, no, I challenge you, sit in the silence. Set a timer on your phone and simply start by being still. The book recommends starting with 10 minutes. You may not hear anything for a while, it will probably feel like it’s not working; but push through, my friend. I guarantee you, if you stay with it, you WILL hear from God.
And I trust and believe Your heart will be forever changed when you hear His gentle whisper!
Love and hugs,
Jill
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