COMPOSED

So tiny, yet magnificent; nearly inaudible, it is easily dismissed. We’re unfamiliar with this language. He doesn’t speak with power, arrogance, or the urgent insistence that demands attention. It’s not the world’s language – thundering, blustery, scorching, expectant. No, His delivery is strong enough to be gentle, certain enough to be doubted, respectful enough to resist pressuring. He doesn’t require our devotion; He risks our rejection. Softly, unpretentiously, He breathes His life into ours, intimate morsels that reveal unmistakably how fully we are known, how longingly we are loved. And then, He waits. With patience beyond our comprehension, He waits.

But we are not listening. Feverishly distracted, we’re unfamiliar with His dialect. We drown out the God of the heavens, restlessly entrenched in commitments, schedules, scintillating media. Engrossed with all the systems on the earth that rotate our little universe around us, we live importantly at the center, where missiles of expectation besiege us. We’re busy, not still enough to listen or hear our own soul. How would we possibly hear a whisper? 

If we wanted to hear Him, where would we start anyway? Listening well doesn’t come naturally; we interrupt with self-assured chatter, trying to avoid silence in conversation. We quickly lose focus, and love to air our opinions, to elevate our fragile egos with sage advice, pithy observations. Beyond these common traps, though, are deeper root entanglements that blur our perceptions, and blind us to insights that lie just outside of our awareness. We can’t notice in others what we haven’t been able to recognize in ourselves. Our blindspots may be numerous or singular, but the areas of our life that we are oblivious to, are surely not invisible to those in our circle.

We call the abundant evidence of emotional pain all around us, or within us, something else: addiction, anger, tension, stress, depression, anxiety, behavior problems, sexual promiscuity and so on. Or suffering may be hidden behind tightly organized lives, dressed nicely, bursting with achievement, yet with gnawings underneath that are never given a name. Insecurities threaten to expose vulnerabilities to our polished exteriors. We want so much to hide. And while we try to disguise our hurt in a multitude of ways, He speaks directly to that internal ache – with compassion, kindness, and care, yearning deeply to catch our attention. 

AMPLIFIED

Our ability to listen well, to hear and discern, is only commensurate with our willingness to carefully take a deep dive below our own surface – in exploration that uncovers buried artifacts, delicately cleanses and restores events to their proper place in our history and shelves them in a newly-ordered fashion of healing and wholeness. He wants to take us out of the shallows, away from child’s play on the shore, and into the powerful surging waters of His instruction – open seas that require mature attention to navigate. This depth introduces the silence that allows us to hear what we need to hear, and to recognize what we might listen for in others. 

In the distant, murky waters of our past, we reacted to various emotional wounds, including unintentional ones. To protect and soothe, we unconsciously developed ways to keep danger at bay, things such as loneliness, shame, painful troubles, confusion, abandonment, abuse. For some, suffocating depravity or oppression made us victims who could not flee. Even relatively stable homes could be interrupted with grief and turmoil. 

At times we landed on healthy strategies and effective coping skills. But, more often, we usually just made do, dealing with whatever came our way with whatever means we had, often suppressing our anguish. The louder our pain became, the more we would drown it out. We tried to distance ourselves, as if walking quickly away would make it disappear. Repeating this over and over, we honed our responses into sadly effective patterns. And, after all that practice, we became the adult version of ourselves. Perhaps with a temperament we never quite got a hold of, a mood that never really went away, tendencies we loathe but can’t seem to release, troubling new behaviors that seem misplaced, but in actuality, fit perfectly into our storyline. 

Defensively insecure, callously uncaring, selfishly demanding, anxiously untrusting; our tender hearts are well-protected behind carefully piled stones. We set each rock into place, and shifted it around until it fit securely into our protective walls. Behind these shields, we resist navigating the earnest plunge that would splash a refreshing wave of healing into our hardened, uncertain lives. We’ve done everything we can to not hear His soft, deliberate, Voice. We have come to this place honestly, not intending to become self-destructive, or hurtful to others.

Thankfully, He is always ready to accompany us underneath, down into warm, tranquil waters that cleanse away layers of heartache and our collective response to it. Once hurt, we hurt back; wounded, we wounded in return. Or, we swallowed our emotions before they could swallow us. He knows every detail of all the ways this unfolded for each of us – everything that left empty, gaping holes in our foundation that we sloppily tried to fill.  

What if, instead of rushing from our discomfort, we sat in a hushed silence, prepared to delve into buried histories, ready for the strain of unearthing former trials, difficult events that we didn’t really acknowledge, but just stuffed into boxes with other childhood memories? Though we might try to shove them back in, these contents spilled out messily as our habits became  blueprints, and turned into our lives. Now they appear as regular struggles: deep insecurity, irrational fears, apathy, meaninglessness, self-condemnation. Mundane, empty days are strung together like dim, fading lights about to go dark. 

It’s no wonder at all that we want to escape our brokenness and are unaware of the murmuring desperation rising up all around us, within us. We work so hard to create a healing space around us, instead of healing the space inside of us. External elements heal externally, temporarily; it takes internal work to sensitively peel back bandages layered over hidden afflictions. We don’t have to ignore what troubles us – in the long run, that never works. But we also don’t have to cope using the world’s foolish advice.

Our deepest need is to detect His Voice, whispered messages embedded in all of our circumstances, designed to speak a revitalizing healing into our very core. His Spirit, alive and active through His Word, reveals spacious, panoramic views – new perspectives of how to examine ourselves and truly understand others. Once we are finally quiet, reflective, receptive, this healing brings new insight into who we are and how we got here. With our own root entanglements sorted out, we find the clarity required to sense the intensity of human need all around us. We must offer the same comfort, nurture and understanding to others that we desire so much for ourselves.

God’s messaging is uniquely distinct. He is all the places, in all the ways, that we need Him, but we have to be alert, expectant. When we come to the end of our independence and self-reliance, we realize we are not sufficient to create the solace and contentment we long for. Find your own silence so that you can let Him fill it with His peace and joy. You’ll know it’s from God because of intimate details that only the Divine could possibly know. Developments will speak clearly and abundantly to specific areas in your life, without explanation in their perfection – evidence of His love in events undeniably altered by His touch. He’s waiting. If you listen, He will reveal Himself. If you knock, He will answer. You will hear a tiny, magnificent whisper, and it will stir regenerating, fortifying life, deep inside your soul. 

POSTLUDE

“The voice of the Spirit is as gentle as a zephyr, so gentle that unless you are living in perfect communion with God, you never hear it. The checks of the Spirit come in the most extraordinarily gentle ways, and if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice you will quench it, and your personal spiritual life will be impaired. His checks always come as a still small voice, so small that no one but the saint notices them.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, August 13

“Beware of ‘the cares of this world,’ because they are the things that produce a wrong temper of soul. It is extraordinary what an enormous power there is in simple things to distract our attention from God. Refuse to be swamped with the cares of this life.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 23

“In the midst of all His ascended glory the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, and to say – ‘Fear not.’ His tenderness is ineffably sweet. Do I know Him like that?” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 24

“As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shall never hear the call of God. But when I am brought into relationship with God, I am in the condition Isaiah was in. Isaiah’s soul was so attuned to God by the tremendous crisis he had gone through that he recorded the call of God to his amazed soul. The majority of us have no ear for anything but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. To be brought into the zone of the call of God is to be profoundly altered.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 16

“Watch for all you are worth until you hear the Bridegroom’s voice in the life of another. Never mind what havoc it brings, what upsets, what crumblings of health, rejoice with divine hilarity when once His voice is heard. You may often see Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 24

“If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across…It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us…It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstanding; then we come to a luminous place, and say – ‘Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!’” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, Nov. 5

“No struggling nor praying will enable you to stop doing some things, and the penalty of sin is that gradually you get used to it and do not know that it is sin. No power save the incoming of the Holy Ghost can alter the inherent consequences of sin.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 16

“What meaning can the Beatitudes have for a society that honors the self-assertive, confident and rich? Blessed are the happy and the strong, we believe. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for a good time, who look out for Number One…In the United States, at least, Christians have grown so comfortable that we no longer identify with the humbler conditions Jesus addressed in the Beatitudes – which may explain why they sound so strange to our ears.” P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 108; 111

“We look for visions from heaven, for earthquakes and thunders of God’s power...and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us. If we will do the duty that lies nearest, we shall see him. One of the most amazing revelations of God comes when we learn that it is in the commonplace things that the Deity of Jesus Christ is realized.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, February 7

“Is my ear so keen to hear the tiniest whisper of the Spirit that I know what I should do?...He does not come with a voice like thunder; His voice is so gentle that it is easy to ignore it.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 13

“I despair of men in the degree in which I have never realized that God has done anything for me. Is my experience such a wonderful realization of God’s power and might that I can never despair of anyone I see? Have I had any spiritual work done in me at all? The degree of panic is the degree of the lack of personal spiritual experience…When God wants to show you what human nature is like apart from Himself, He has to show it you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God…you know there is no criminal who is half so bad in actuality as you know yourself to be in possibility…God’s Spirit continually reveals what human nature is like apart from His grace.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, June 1

“If you debate for a second when God has spoken, it is all up. Never begin to say – ‘Well, I wonder if He did speak?’ Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, June 18

“Get out of your mind the idea of expecting God to come with compulsions and pleadings. When our Lord called His disciples there was no irresistible compulsion from outside. The quiet passionate insistence of His “Follow Me” was spoken to men with every power wide awake. If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something akin to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, “Here am I; send me.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 14

“Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you; or else tell Him that at all costs you want to be identified with His death…We mistake the ecstasy of our first introduction into the Kingdom for the purpose of God in getting us there; His purpose in getting us there is that we may realize all that identification with Jesus Christ means.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, December 23

“Surrender is not the surrender of the external life, but of the will; when that is done, all is done. There are very few crises in life; the great crisis is the surrender of the will. God never crushes a man’s will into surrender, He never beseeches him, He waits until the man yields up his will to Him. That battle never needs to be re-fought.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 13

“Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 23

The Jesus I Never Knew, Copyright 1995 by Philip Yancey, used by permission.

ENCOURAGING WORD

Psalm 46:10  Be still, and know that I am God.

John 10:27  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.

Genesis 28:15  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

1 Peter 3:15  But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.

Psalm 25: 4-5  Show me your ways, Lord,  teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

Hebrews 4:12-13  For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 

1 Peter 1:13  Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Isaiah 55:10-12  As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace…

Isaiah 50:4-5  The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears. 

Hebrews 4:15-16; 5:2  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need…He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. 

Psalm 37:7-8  Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret - it leads only to evil. 

Psalm 18:30  As for God, His way is perfect: The Lord’s word is flawless; He shields all who take refuge  in Him.

Psalm 139: 23-24  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

John 10:27  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

Mark 1:35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Mark 4:18-19  Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

Mark 6:31  Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’

Luke 2:19  But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

1 Corinthians 10:13  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. 

2 Corinthians 7:10  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 

Hebrews 12:1  …let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Isaiah 66:2  ‘This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.’

Isaiah 48:17-18  ‘I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.’