Do you ever have that moment when you think someone may have called out your name….but you’re not quite sure…so you look around casually to see if anyone is acknowledging you or trying to catch your eye…but you don’t see anyone and wonder if you just made it up or if you are confident enough in your auditory skills to look a little more fervently for the summoner?
I have one of those names. “Jimmy” for some reason sounds like a plethora of other names. It may not necessarily rhyme but it gets mistaken all the time for any other name that might end in the “mee” sound. It kind of gets annoying really, but at the risk of ignoring someone that might actually be trying to summon me, I diligently look and respond in a half-hearted “yes?” just in case.
Hearing God’s voice is one of those Christian disciplines we try so hard to explain, formulize and even conjure into reality. We pray, wait 2 seconds then explain that God is being “intentionally quiet” or that He’s “waiting on my next move” or that somehow we’ve sinned and God is punishing us with His silence. It’s laughable really that we think we can manipulate God into speaking, but rarely do I hear it taught that “God speaks far more than we care to listen.”
In my ministry, I’ve begun incorporating a listening prayer discipline into my life. I operate on the basis that God speaks with the intention of me understanding and replying. I assume that God constantly wants to speak to me and lead me (even lead me into times of rest and refreshing or into times of intimacy with Him).
The passage I always here referenced to this is the time where Elijah goes in search of God’s voice only to realize that God’s voice was not in the wind, the storm, the noise, etc. that God was a “still small voice.” We’ve built an entire theology around the fact that God’s voice is a whisper and those of us who miss the whisper are condemned as infantile, sub-par believers (“what? Did someone say ‘Jimmy’?”)
Here’s my challenge: SLOW DOWN. We’ve committed ourselves to a relationship but taken no time to LEARN how to communicate. In America, for instance, we have totally ignored the disciplines of silence and solitude. Even our “quiet times” are spent reading, journaling, worshipping – all active disciplines. WE NEVER LISTEN.
Have you ever just sat on the couch with a cup of tea, stared off into space, let your mind stall itself out, reach a point of peace…then just listened?
God’s voice is unmistakable. It’s a thought, a picture (God’s quite the artist by the way), a movie, an epiphany a conclusion, a name, a face, a desire, a joy, a sadness, a surprise, a mystery, a burden, something fresh, something treasured, something remembered…something special.
Listen…
