My pen hovered over the blank page in trepidation for a moment before I wrote the words in the scrawl of an inconsistent ballpoint pen.
“Lord, is there anything You want to say to me?”
The question stared back at me blankly. I tapped the end of the pen on the miles of empty page and waited. A seemingly random word or two came to my mind;—the beginning of a sentence—not even a complete thought. I hesitated; unsure if I should write it down. Was that God? It seemed so incredibly presumptuous to assume. What if I was wrong? What if I wasn’t?
The words come piecemeal. As though the Holy Spirit were giving dictation to a slow typer; or perhaps just a slow listener. He waits for me to write down what He’s given, before He says anything more.
I used to be jealous of Christians who had a clear sense of what God was saying to them personally. Not just a timely Bible verse that came to mind,—nothing against that, of course—but some people really seemed to talk with God instead of at Him, as I did. They would say confidently, “The Lord showed me…” “The Lord said—not audibly—,” they’d carefully caveat, before sharing a testimony of their personal relationship with Jesus. It made me jealous. After all, I was a Christian, too. I prayed. I talked to God. Why did they have such a clear sense of Him while I usually felt like I was leaving a voicemail?
Little did I know that this niggling dissatisfaction with the status quo of my prayer life—and my hunger to have what others did—was God speaking to me already, though I couldn’t discern it. The unresolved disquiet wasn’t my soul crying out; but rather the Spirit speaking to one who wasn’t used to listening, and couldn’t discern the language.
My hearing has gotten a little better over time, and I’ve come to recognize that God’s voice is like a pebble in my shoe. A tiny distracting thought that looms larger and larger until I fully consider it. Sometimes it is a pebble of conviction that cuts; or a warning to pause and examine. Other times it is a comforting reminder to take off my shoes because the ground I’ve wandered onto is holy.
This type of listening is unfamiliar territory. Particularly for those of us in the evangelical tradition. We want clear direction, well-enunciated, (preferably with a Scripture reference), so that we won’t make a mistake. We don’t want to have to guess. We don’t want to have to practice discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit; if practicing involves the risk of getting it wrong. We don’t want others to think we’ve wandered off into questionable realms. We want everything we hear from God to be obvious to all and approved by the majority.
But, the thing of it is, no one else can feel a pebble in your shoe. No one else can feel the unyielding sharp stone of conviction that brings about repentance. No one else can have your personal relationship with Jesus for you.
God is like an untameable continent upon Who’s shores we arrive after passing from death to life. Certainly, one could stay on the soft sand looking backwards over the uncrossable distance by which she has come rather than venturing into the undiscovered country. And yet, some irresistible magnetism beckons in a language we’ve yet to learn to adventure into the Unknown. The Deep calls out to the deep places within us until we resolve to become pilgrims in the Wilderness of God; discerning the language of heaven.
And so, I scrawl the words of the question day after day.
“Lord, is there anything that you want to say to me?”
A version of this article was published in the March/April edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com
