As believers in Christ we are a peculiar lot… we go forward in life on written phrases in scripture, resonant words from a friend, a vibrant dream or vision which is often no more than an audible or visual whisper. Among many other titles, God is the whispering King. His whispers slip into our thinking like an enveloping vapor, a sweet incense in our heart and soul… alive in Christ.
i believe most religious people seem to want a God who yells and stomps around like they do, but that’s just not our King’s nature. His silence is deafening, and His whisper commands star systems, moves mountains, and can unmake matter… His whisper is louder than the sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883, which was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away… God’s whisper is louder causing hearts to live, penetrating even to the darkest places imaginable.
Standing as close as 250 feet away from the impact of an atomic bomb, creates a decibel count of 210. If you didn’t vaporize from just the volume alone, without sufficient hearing protection, not to mention a complete sound-resistant bunker surrounding you, you could quite literally die from the intense vibrations that would literally shake you apart. 210dB’s is so loud, it shakes apart anything solid into its smallest parts to its molecular level… matter just falls apart. God’s whisper is louder, and once He has spoken it never ceases to be said. His words are eternal.
Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
It isn’t Him who isn’t speaking but us who aren’t hearing. And how do we hear Him? With faith, endurance, and persistence. We serve the Lord, who whispers to us, coming to us as quietly as new falling snow.
With the Lord, if you’re brave enough to ask, He is brave enough to tell. We already believe the Lord does indeed talk to us, but how He does that is the next thing to contemplate. Onward and upward friends for the prize of the call of God in Christ Jesus.
Can God’s direction for our lives be misunderstood or lost in translation as it makes its way from His heart to ours? Absolutely. We can make it up or mess it up, and sometimes we can’t tell too easily where the vision ends and our imagination begins, but the honest answer is yes, we do get lost in translation sometimes. but God is faithful to bring His word back to us repetitively until we get it. Hearing from God is not like receiving a text message or reading an email… we can and do get in the way.
A while back, a woman was coming to our fellowship. She felt she had a prophetic gift which must operate all the time in all situations, and must be exercised at every opportunity for everyone, and as a result, every week she would strain to always have a “Word from God”… no matter how small the occasion. She even had a word from the Lord over a fruit basket once. Over the weeks which followed, we all began to notice a pattern… there were, indeed, words and visions of the Lord, but there were other things we were confident were just made up. Did it disqualify her, absolutely not, but did it inspire us to not trust her too much, probably yes. Every week she would do what i call, “Waiting on the phone to ring”, and if it didn’t ring when she wanted, how she wanted, we all witnessed her picking up her spiritual telephone and pretending a call that wasn’t there… all to maintain a manufactured persona. i wonder, am i any different?
Hearing the whisper of God needs to be held to the highest standard…if we hear, we hear, and if we don’t, we don’t… and we don’t fill in the blank when the phone doesn’t ring.
Believe me, I am more than capable of hearing what I wish God were saying rather than what he is actually saying, if at all… and maybe you’re in the same boat. To recognize this of ourselves is real maturity, and a rigorous honesty. Here’s a poem the Lord gave me back then about hearing the whispers of God and my need to be prophetic even when i don’t have anything.
“Many times my phone rings, most of the time i hear,
most often i know who it is, most of the time i answer.
Sometimes my phone rings, i pretend not to hear, i ignore and don’t answer,
i know i should, but i don’t. i think to myself, Oh, big lazy,
just let it go to voice mail, i know God’s faithful, maybe He will leave a message.
Occasionally i merely wish my phone would ring, i wish it would ring,
really bad.
But the truth is, sometimes it isn’t ringing, but i answer anyway,
“Hello! How are you?” I pretend.
i’ve gotten good at pretending,
pretending when the phone doesn’t ring,
indenting a prayer so others will subtly note,
my pretended throne room conversation.
i do it so well, it causes people to perceive and think,
his phone always rings, and maybe they’ll really impressed,
“Oooo! Excuse me, is that the phone ringing as we speak?”
Hopefully, they’ll just say “Wow!”i chuckle when i see their reactions,
as people seeing through their own spiritual haze,
only in my dreams i hear them say about me, “Wow, isn’t he amazing?!”
i can sound like i’ve got, all to myself, an incredible connection going on.
A better connection than anyone else, you know it makes me kind of elite.
The truth is, though sad to say, on being elite…
i like that…
but i don’t like to like that,
although it’s true. Even worse, i think i need that.How sad.
Don’t answer the phone, just don’t pick up if it doesn’t ring.
Just leave it at peace even when we wish it would ring, really bad.
Our connection is real, God will call, He will and we know He does.
But don’t answer the phone if it didn’t ring.
Don’t pretend the call, don’t make a face, just so you can say,
“He called”,
“I heard”,
just so you can say, “I know”.
So i sit here waiting, waiting in the hall.
Maybe the phone will ring, because i don’t know what to do, at all.
I actually have a vision, but i don’t understand what i see.
Maybe the phone will ring,
waiting for the phone to ring,
i’m sure the phone will ring, any second now, i know He’ll call.
In 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and declared the word of the Lord. One of the stand out things he said which rings in my ears today was in vs 17 saying, my paraphrase here, “… “you don’t need to struggle and fight this fight. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the LORD, who is with you.”
A minimum of seven times, the scriptures tell us to be still. Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” In Num9:8 Moses told the people to “stand still and hear”. At the request of Joshua, the Lord made even the sun and moon stand still. If the entire universe bows to the command of God to be still, how much more should we be willing to also sit still with Him and hear His wisdom?
Taking wisdom from 2Chronicles 20 and from Psalm46, i gather we should put ourselves in position to hear the Lord, and reduce our speed, stop multitasking, lower the ambient roaring noise of our lives… that is to say, be still … and then listen for God to speak. It will come like a whisper… soft, like a mist appearing and moving across the water. i’m not saying to cease life’s activities, but i am saying to cease striving.
When Jesus faced major decisions, his standard was to disengage from the crowds around him and to devote time to solitude and prayer.
John 6:15, “… He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone.” Luke 9:18 reveals Jesus was “alone praying”.
Notably, the overall outcome of Jesus’s habit of being alone and still before the Lord was that He greatly increased His likelihood of hearing from His Father. The big idea is the all-encompassing importance of hearing God.
Before selecting his twelve disciples, Jesus went off alone and spent an entire night in prayer according to Luke6:12. He needed to hear from his Father about who he planned to select, and He knew the best way to do that was to get quiet before the Lord to better hear wisdom.
Later, when Jesus was preparing to endure the agony of the cross, he withdrew to the garden of Gethsemane, where he and the twelve disciples had often prayed. Other than His friends praying at a distance, he prayed alone. His devotion to hearing from God motivated Him to take purposeful, intentional action in order to create space where God’s whispers could be heard. The Lord doesn’t have to be loud for us to hear… maybe our difficulty is not that He speaks so softly, but more our ears are dull.
Probably one of the utmost quiet times in my life have been sitting in the woods, in the snow, during hunting season. The falling snow acts like a big damper on any noise which would be distracting. Sitting in the woods in the falling snow is so quiet, you can hear the molecules in your ears. It was the positioning of myself that was so powerful, the effect upon my heart and mind lasted long after i went home.
When we whisper, i call it a “science of the subtle,” which, to me, is a very interesting study of the subtleties of God’s voice and how it moves through our spirit. Haven’t you noticed how when someone whispers to you, the intimacy of the moment is greatly elevated, and some sort of extra effort to hear and understand kicks in? Words that soak into our ears are whispered… not yelled. We learn to hear the Lord from experience, and a lot of that wisdom comes from having ignored Him. Similarly, good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta’ good judgment comes from the experience of bad judgment. The word of the Lord is often buried in the “science of the subtle”. Can you hear Him?
Rest assured, beyond the ends of the earth, the Lord is God who loves us and would gladly whisper to us words of encouragement or direction, wisdom and insight, if we would be more willing to carve out the space to hear from heaven across the course of our work-a-day world. Without being willing to sit with the Lord until He shares His wisdom with us, we are running the risk of missing out on some of life’s greatest God-guided adventures. It is not too likely we are going to hear the Lord while sitting being bored on the couch playing on our phone, watching game shows, or reality TV, wishing desperately to be anywhere else but where we are. If you can’t hear God, what are you gonna do about it? At some point in the future, it’s not going to be an option but an absolute necessity… again, in the now, what are you gonna do about it?
i have a suggestion: be intentional. Be purposeful, and take steps with all power to put yourself in a position to hear Him… and go there to your purposeful and intentional place, and go there, and go there, and do it over and over until you find His appointment. Wouldn’t you know… God tends to speak to people who want to hear from Him. Why would He share His wisdom with someone who isn’t interested in sitting with Him? Why would He let into Heaven those who do NOT love Him? i am no scholar, and truthfully, i’m none too bright, but i do know He tends to offer divine direction to those who are willing to order their daily lives around receiving input from Him. If you seek Him, He will find you.
Perceiving and apprehending God’s direction is somewhat subjective, but it’s not random nor does He leave His word unsupported. Right now, there are so many believers who are in a state of transition. It is messy and oh so very uncomfortable because life is not where it was, nor is it where it will be.
i had a dream many many years ago where i had come out of one small door into a hallway. It was a nice hallway about 60+ft long with a big window at the end. There was beautiful wainscoting on the left and right walls, and there were two doors on the right, one small and one large. The hallway was comfortable, carpeted, had a water fountain and a restroom, but other than that it was obviously not a space for long term habitation. In the dream i noticed i was too big to go back through the door i had come out of, and i was barely tall enough to reach the door knob of the larger door.
There was one more element to the dream of being in the hall between doors… in the corridor, there were whispers, whispers of encouragement, and wisdom, and there was a faint waltz playing somewhere in the distance. i knew who was whispering to me and His voice was comfort and strength.
Even though God’s whispers are rarely tangible, there are things we can do to help us determine if we’re hearing from God or hearing from the bad juju we ate last night. Where is your special place to hear God? Some have a favorite chair in the living room, a bedroom, or an exclusive corner in the yard… for me i had a chair at the barn where i could look over the pasture. Some write and pray while on the train on their way to work. The time and place tends to vary, but for all those who diligently are looking to hear from the Lord, the practice is absolute, it is intentional and for the express purpose of hearing the whispers of God. The result of their consistent and repeatable life habit is that they routinely hear from God. For me personally, i love the mornings. Every day, from the time i open my eyes to the time i close my eyes, i’m in the a conversation with God. You may think that’s pretty extreme, but friends, i want you to know, i’m a desperate man… i don’t just want to hear God, ineeeeed to hear Him. Need. It is my very breath, peace, and hope. i take notes from what i read and hear… i’ve got piles of notebooks with page after page of whispers from the Lord. i suppose it all comes down to how important is hearing God to you, and are you willing to be responsible for what He whispers to you? If God is willing to share His wisdom with you, then you ought to be responsible and write it down to mull over later. Again, God doesn’t tell us stuff, just so we can be impressed with ourselves and walk around with a manufactured persona of “I know”.
God’s whisper slips into our thinking like an enveloping vapor…
1 Kings 19:11-12, “And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks 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: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And so it was, Elijah heard…”
A small voice, a still voice, it was a calm voice… implying a whisper. The Hebrew word there for “still” speaks to being more breath than the solid intonation of a voice. The mountains rattled and shook, the earth moved, and fire roared, yet, in a whisper, God spoke. In Ps131:2 the psalmist calmed and reduced his mind to a whisper. His lips did not cease necessarily, but his words word quiet and with breath…a whisper. One scholar remarked that a whisper speaks right into the center of the soul a man.
When we are in pain, we anguish out loud…but there are people whose pain is so intense they are reduced to gasps and whispers of agony… their whisper of pain roars in the world around them. Even though they seem driven to silence, to stand in the room with them is like leaning into a hurricane. Sometimes, i am amazed how loud life is around me is at night when i’m in town… the sheer volume of the world around us is invasive and constantly screaming at us. But when we position ourselves to hear the Lord, reducing our minds to being as quiet as falling snow, God’s whispers are revealed to our hearts, hidden from the ears of others. Within the Hebrew word for whisper is an open door to God’s house that is low, soft, and humble, and He makes the revealed and concealed elements of His heart available to be known… in God’s whisper is the washing of His word, designed for us to step into His breathy response which drips with grace.
Something amazing happened in Job 4… Eliphaz the Temanite (tay-maw-nite) is telling his observation of Job’s difficulties. Vs 12 reveals what Eliphaz called a “stealthy” word, and his ear “received the whisper of it”. The word “whisper” there means an “inkling of a sound”, which means it was more than a spark and probably less than a gleaming. First is a spark, than a flicker, a glimmer, and last a gleaming, a spark being the smallest and gleaming being steady yet thin. Then in vs 15 he says that, “…a spirit passed before my face; The hair on my body stood up. It stood still, But I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; There was silence; Then I heard a voice saying: ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?”
Where he said “there was silence” and then “a voice came” is supported by most theologians as a most piercing question which came to him like the mists of a whisper.
Does God speak to you in whispers? Do you really want to know what the Lord has to say? Are you feeling at the end of a path and not sure what’s next? As scripture says in 2 Chronicles 20, position yourself…put yourself in a place to hear, doing it consistently until you hear. Be persistent. Sit yourself down intentionally, with the purpose to apprehend the word of the Lord. Be consistent and repeatable and keep pursuing Him until He reveals your next step up. You can do this! The Lord says, Seek and you shall find, find and you shall have, for I AM the Lord your God. Think about it.
i don’t believe most of us think of the Lord as someone who whispers, but if we do more than just notice that He speaks to us, take note of how He does it. Is He always yelling at you? No, just like you are not always yelling at your kids, at least i hope you’re not… and if you are, that really needs to be rectified … how you treat them is their model for how they’ll treat others… i would bet what most sticks in our minds are the more spectacular parts of scripture where God spoke…a burning bush, thunder and lightning, the walls of Jericho falling down, violent winds, tongues of fire, etc, etc. In those examples, to me, God is shouting, but that’s not everyday stuff. He speaks softly to us, low, and humble…usually His words are like a mist, low to the ground, and very quiet. He whispers peace to us when we are going to sleep and love to us when we wake up.
Even in all our mundane ways, we shall know God. His whispers invite us in closer to Him, hearing with greater exactness, to not be satisfied to sit at a distance from Him… He whispers, words low to the ground which are our resolution to key decisions, little words which nudge our rescue from dark nights of the soul, promptings which inspire us to grow up… they echo down the long hall between the shadow of conflict and peace, uncovering and healing our disgraces which are felt but rarely expressed. The Lord is the Whispering King.
No matter if you’re the fastest person alive, no matter how smooth or smart, there are things in life which we simply can’t outrun and will catch up to us. God’s whisperings are like that. We may think we’ve out distanced Him, but He is always on the trail to resolve our conflicts. He speaks low to us, most times in a whisper. When someone whispers to us, our mind seems to listen more intently to catch the words, to grasp after the meaning, and God is always after drawing us into a relationship with Him…everyday, every hour, every second…even when we’re lost surfing the internet or staring at our cell phone, or caught up in the mindlessness of game shows or reality TV, He is there beckoning to us to lend Him our ears.
Position yourself. Intentionally put yourself in a position to hear Him. Turn off the TV, put your phone down, reduce yourself to a whisper and listen. His words are there and they are life.
Thanks for being here, i hope you’ll go your way this week in peace, setting your feet in a direction which brings you closer to the Lord. Drive carefully, be mindful of the next guy, sometimes they aren’t all together paying attention you know. Be strong and courageous, Amen.