Day 14 – When I Can’t Hear God
As you begin to spend time with God, settle yourself somewhere quiet and comfortable. Take a few deep breaths. Spend a few moments gathering your thoughts, becoming aware of God’s presence with you and in you.
Journal for 5 minutes on yesterday’s reflection and practice. What did you think about and learn? What challenged you? Did God say anything to you throughout the day?
Then, begin today’s devotional.
Read: 1 Kings 19:11-13
Then he said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the Lord’s presence.”
At that moment, the Lord passed by. A great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and was shattering cliffs before the Lord, 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 there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
Suddenly, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Psalm 13
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long will I store up anxious concerns within me,
agony in my mind every day?
How long will my enemy dominate me?
Consider me and answer, Lord my God.
Restore brightness to my eyes;
otherwise, I will sleep in death.
My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,”
and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your faithful love;
my heart will rejoice in your deliverance.
I will sing to the Lord
because he has treated me generously.
Recently, I sat in the Aerie with a student as they expressed a struggle that was all too familiar to me. “I’m really trying, but I just can’t seem to hear God. I want to be closer to God but I feel like I’m hitting a brick wall. I’ve had multiple disappointing experiences with my time in prayer and they are starting to pile up. I know God speaks to other people, but He doesn’t speak to me.” Have you ever been there? Maybe you’re there right now. I know very well what it feels like to ask those questions.
I have learned a few things while walking through my own frustrations with not hearing God. A lot of those are things we’ve said in this devotional already and are worth highlighting. God is not trying to make it hard. God does not have favorites. God is relational and wants to dialogue with you in life. Sometimes hearing God is connected to how full our schedules are. Sometimes it’s connected to how fast our minds are moving. Sometimes it’s connected to our lack of stillness and quietness. The ultimate way that God has spoken is through Jesus. He is the word(s) of God. He is God made audible, visible, palpable. When you don’t receive a word, go back to the Word. God, in His love and wisdom, has chosen to speak to us through a book. Reading it and being read by it is an opportunity to trust that God is speaking and to listen in.
For today, I’d like us to consider one very important lesson as it pertains to hearing God. God often speaks to us in ways that are so normal and so subtle to us that they are easy to miss. Let me put it another way, God speaks your language, and I don’t just mean English or Spanish or Mandarin. God handcrafted you and a part of that design is how you relate with the world and others. Some of us connect through ideas and thoughts, some through words, some with our physical bodies, some through sounds, some through what we see, some through our emotions, and the list goes on.
I’ve noticed that a lot of times, what causes our frustrations is not so much that God is not speaking nor that we are not working hard to hear. The cause of our frustration is that we assume that every time God speaks, He is trying to speak only through our ears or in our thoughts. Sometimes God is on the radio and we are just looking for Him on the TV. God is likely speaking to you and it may just be through a different means than you are used to.
Maybe our prayer shouldn’t be so much for God to speak, but instead, for God to help us be aware of how He is speaking.
Don’t get me wrong—there are times when God is effectively silent in our lives. But silence is not the absence of God’s presence. It’s just quiet, attentive presence. Some of my best friends are people who come to my house and we say nothing with words but a lot with presence. Peter Greig sums this up with poetic beauty in his book God on Mute:
first there is prayer
and where there is prayer there may be miracles
but where miracles may not be there are questions
and where there are questions there may be silence
but silence may be more than absence
silence may be presence muted
silence may not be nothing but something
to explore defy accuse engage
and this is prayer
and where there is prayer there may yet be miracles…
Prayer:
Jesus, sometimes I feel like I don’t hear You, even when I desperately want to. Help me today to remember that Your presence is like that of a friend and a brother, and that words aren’t always necessary to know that You are with me. You are closer than the breath I breathe.
Journal:
Consider the following question(s).
What are some ways you’ve noticed God speaking to you “in your language”?
When you think about God sometimes being silent, what are your immediate thoughts and feelings?
In hindsight, what are some ways that God has been attentive to you even in times you didn’t sense Him directly speaking?
Today’s Practice:
Set an alarm for sometime today where you can take 10 minutes to just sit and be quiet with God (outdoors, if possible). In the silence, look for His quiet, attentive presence.
By Christian Dawson, Campus Pastor