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Listening For God's Gentle Whisper
by Susan Gurney Read I Kings 19:1-18 "...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." I Kings 19:11b-12 (NIV) "Mew, mew, mew!!" The tiny cries of newborn kittens indistinctly rising up from some hiding place always generated a great deal of excitement in my young sisters and me. For long days before, we had noticed how big the mother cat was growing, and we knew it wouldn't be long before the tiny sounds would give away the hiding place of her latest litter of kittens. We three girls would soon hunt down the source of the small cries to our delight and to the mother cat's chagrin! How often each of us search for an audience with God in much the same way--seeking to hear His voice in one place or another--thinking we must find Him through the process of a giant supernatural "Hide-and-Seek" game. "Well, this person found out God's will for him, by reading the first Bible verse he saw when he flipped open the Bible"; or, "She heard God speak to her through the T.V. evangelist"; or, "God spoke to me through nature's wonders." --And how often have we heard someone say, "God told ME...," only to think to ourselves, "How come He never talks to me?!" In the Bible passage a fear-bound, complaining Elijah finds out two things about having a conversation with God: number one--God was the One seeking him out--he didn't have to go looking for God; and number two--he had to set aside the fears, complaints, and noise inside his head in order to hear the "gentle whisper" of God. True, we often don't hear God speak with actual words to us today. He may even speak to us in one of the ways mentioned earlier. It is plain, however, that we will have a much easier time hearing what God has to say to us if we set aside a daily quiet time--a time not just to read God's word and to pray--but also a time to step off the roller coaster of our busy daily lives to simply sit in silence, listening to His gentle whisper. Susan Gurney writes devotionals, poetry, short stories, memoirs, and nonfiction on family history, faith and nature. She has experience writing/editing church and family newsletters. Find Susan at http://ssimonsgurney.christianblogsites.com/blog/ Copyright 2013 Susan Simons Gurney Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |