Day Nine Listen
In this, one of the hardest seasons of your life you will need to learn how to completely empty yourself of the world around you. All the pain, questions, paperwork, family, friends and other ‘stuff’ that pulls you into a whirlwind of craziness; when you are ready; when God begins to nudge you gently; it must be stopped for a moment, just like a giant ferris wheel loading its next riders, so you can learn how to listen. He will gently begin to speak to you to be quiet, and in the quiet, he will not only comfort you, but he will begin to reveal a pathway out of your loneliness. David spoke of this in the Psalms.
Psalm 23:2:
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters
Psalm 46:10:
10Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
David, how he must have wondered when his own craziness would end. He prayed over and over to his God to free him, to come and rescue him, to preserve him, to love him. Night and day he called out to his God to reveal the way back to sanity. His prayers of confusion, pain, grief, and total isolation span over 100 chapters of the bible. And the amazing thing, the thing that caught my attention the most, were the moments of revelation intertwined with his prayers of searching.
Psalm 18
1I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.
2The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
Psalm 107:29:
29He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
In the midst of his pain, he stopped for short periods to tell God he loved him and spoke the very words he did not have the strength to do on his own. He knew he needed to listen, but in his grief he just could not control his desire to call out, to ask why, to scream out to God to fix the mess he found himself in. It was his constant groans that kept him from hearing the answer he held inside himself all along. He had to stop the giant ferris wheel of madness, to let God get on and talk with him for a while.
How patient is our God to let us rant and rave, and carry on with our craziness. Like the child in a checkout lane, we pitch our tantrums, to the one parent who just smiles and walks two feet ahead. That perfect parent that just watches with a huge smile, while we cry ourselves out of tears. Then the silence comes. We look up and see him there, he has been waiting for us to realize his presence. And in this silence he begins to speak.
First, a firm hand takes us and helps us up. No words are shared, they are not needed. We see his love mirrored back to us in his eyes. Then he walks us by a still stream of water to calm us. The quiet is peaceful. We feel a surge of peace begin to envelope us. The anger, fear and doubt we felt moments ago melt into a vision of the new starting place he has led us to. And as we listen, he gently anoints us with the purpose of tomorrow. As he hands us a package with more than we will need for the trip, we are overcome by joy. Finally, the revelation of our new pathway, the new work he has trained us for becomes clear. David must have taken such a walk with our Lord, and at the end was handed a pen and paper to record these simple steps for those of us that followed him. He wrote:
Psalm 23
1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Listening is also spoken of by many of the New Testament scholars as well. I am reminded mostly of the disciples as they went across the waters on a terribly stormy night. Fear gripped them too, and caused them to call out in desperation to a sleeping Jesus. Jesus simply rose from his pillows, rebuked the wind and told the sea to be still. How hurt and frustrated he must have been when he spoke his next words. Where is your faith?
Mark 4:39:
39And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
I have found my faith growing stronger since I have been listening. It is very hard, for I, like David want to talk to God, to say,” but what about this idea I had…or I thought you wanted me to do this?” It is the quiet moments, when I am truly listening for his still quiet voice, that I listen as Job did, and hear:
Job 4:15-17
15Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
16It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,
17Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
I tell my voice to be quiet, and I try to empty out the thoughts that race through my mind. I think I have achieved silence for a moment, but I find myself going over the grocery list within seconds. I finally hear him in the moments like today, when I was just driving down the road, taking in the beauty of his creation in the spring. The voice was just there, it passed within my ears without my asking, and I heard it so clear. So difficult we make it when we cling to our human nature, when we try to force God to come to us on our time table. So simple it is when he knows we are ready. In a quiet moment, he speaks beautiful words that touch our soul. Beautiful words that heal. Beautiful words that tell us what to do next. Words that humble us to our knees and set our feet to the work he wants us to do.
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