The Still, Small Voice
Josiah Dean is the worship leader at One Reason Church in Minneapolis, MN. We are so excited to welcome him to the blog this week as we head into our 2nd out of 4 weeks of guest writers! Not only is Josiah a great friend, leader, and passionate about sharing the Gospel, as Alicia’s fiancé, this will not be the only time you will be hearing from him! We pray that this week you feel challenged, but also take time to be still and listen for the still, small voice!
Read below, comment, and join the conversation! XO, the Boldly Seeking Team
Have you ever wondered why God didn’t just create the universe and everything in it with the snap of a finger? Well I have. I mean God is all-powerful, capable of anything, isn’t he? He could have definitely done it that way, but I think there is something to take away from this that gives us a glimpse into how God operates.
From my human, short-sighted, and narrow perspective, I expect God to work in ways that will fit into my understanding and perspective of reality. I expect God to speak through a booming, super-sonic megaphone in a deep, manly voice that shakes the foundations of the earth (at least in my crazy imagination) and I expect Him to do things in a BIG way that causes a scene! Don’t get me wrong, God has definitely moved in my life in some incredibly big ways, but I have found that it rarely happens in the way I expect it. There will for sure be times where God parts the Red Sea in our life like He did for Israel, but far more often he will speak through the still, small voice like He did with Elijah.
11 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire [a]a still small voice.
13 So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-13 NKJV.
God is more concerned with the process rather than the outcome. God could have easily spoken to Elijah through the strong wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but God wasn’t just trying to impress Elijah with the outcome, God wanted Elijah to listen, to truly listen. He wanted Elijah to drown out all the noise, the distraction, and the chaos of life, quiet his heart, and give God his complete attention. It was in the process that Elijah was drawn nearer to God.
So often I find myself wanting to skip the process and just arrive at the outcome in life, but it’s in the process that we grow and develop a deeper relationship with God. Going through trials and hardships in life is never fun or easy, but it’s when we learn to quiet our hearts and just listen for God’s voice. We learn to become dependent on Him and stop operating in our own strength. We stop trying to control the situation and learn to give up control. We can’t go into prayer thinking God will always speak to us in the way we expect, or in the amount of time we give Him. We need to tear down the box that we put God into and learn to truly just sit and soak up what He has for us.
When I was nineteen years old, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I wanted to serve God in whatever way He had for me. I would spend time praying each night before bed and ask God for clarity and direction into the next chapter of my life, but I would always come into my time with God with an allotted amount of time and was so busy doing all the talking that I could never actually hear the still, small voice that God had been speaking to me in all along. I was too busy unknowingly obsessing over what I had to say and ask God, that I kept missing it. I turned prayer into a monologue when it was always meant to be a dialogue. Prayer isn’t just speaking to God, it’s speaking with God. Finally after almost nine months of this monologue-style prayer, I went to my youth group one day, a place I knew would be quiet and I would be alone with God, and I spent hours there just praying and listening for God’s voice, learning to quiet my mind. And boy, oh boy did it pay off! I think I heard God speak to me more in those few hours of prayer than I had in the last nine months! God spoke to me clearly and I left that time with peace and direction.
This is definitely a learning process that we will be on our whole lives (unless you’re one of those lucky, perfect people of course). Sometimes God will speak to us after only a few minutes in prayer, or He will even interrupt us in the middle of the day to speak to us, it doesn’t always take hours and hours of prayer to hear from God, but the point is that we need to not put expectations and limitations on what God wants to do and how He wants to move in our lives. God simply wants to connect with you and I, free from distractions and our pesky iPhones (or Androids for you crazy people out there), and just give Him our attention and our time. If we learn to do this day-to-day, we will see God begin to move in our lives and speak to our hearts more than we ever thought imaginable.
Let’s take some time to just sit and listen to God’s voice today. Spend time letting Him speak to you through His word, the Bible, and linger in His presence, God will never leave you there talking to yourself when you seek Him with all of your heart. He was there waiting for you before you ever decided to go and seek Him. He is good and faithful and WILL move in your situation if we trust Him. If Jesus spent hours in prayer listening to the still, small voice of his Father, then that might be a good indication that we should too!
