I awoke this morning with God beckoning me to get up. I reached for my Bible and notebook, and this morning He said I also needed my Streams in the Desert devotion book. There are no human words to accurately describe the way God talks to me. In trying to describe it, I come up with nothing...except that I'm POSITIVE He is speaking to me. It began years ago with little faint whispers. But as I began to really know that yes I was indeed hearing His voice, the clearer His voice became. So, I have fallen into a very conversational relationship with Him, talking to Him all day and also expecting Him to speak. Absolutely EXPECTING. I have come to the conclusion that God must love for us to expect to hear His voice, because the more I expect it, the more clearly I hear Him. If doubt creeps in, the less clearly I hear Him. I'm not sure how this whole thing works, but my guess is that it has much to do with my level of faith. And FAITH is what this blog posts centers upon. But, I'm getting ahead of myself here...
So, this morning, He was nudging me out of bed. He had something He wanted to tell me. Those moments (which are more and more frequent) are unbelievably exciting. Picture yourself as a child, and your very best friend in the whole world calls you and says, "I have something to tell you. It's the most delightful secret. Meet me in our clubhouse ASAP." The thrill! And this is much the same way. As soon as the alarm went off this morning, my first moments of semi-consciousness were filled with His obvious nudging. Warm sheets, drowsy longings to snooze...all of that is immediately overruled by the flip of my heart in knowing that He wants to talk to me.
After feeding the cats (who do not let quiet fall upon the house again until morsels are heaped in their bowls), I get on my knees and ask Him to be quite clear with me today. Then I climb onto the couch, pull a fuzzy blanket onto my lap and reach for my Bible, notebook and devotion book. Sheer expectation fills me, because I know His voice. I know it. And He has said He has something to tell me, so I wait in expectation. Because I trust Him. His ways are utterly unknown to us as humans. How in the world can the God of the universe singularly speak to one human out of billions? And how can He make His voice heard even though it's not audible to the human ear? Trying to understand this is like trying to put the entire ocean into a child's sippy cup. God simply cannot be defined in our terms. He is layer upon layer, deeper and wider than we can fathom.
"The shout of steadfast faith is in direct contrast to the moans of wavering faith, and to the wail of discouraged hearts. Among the many 'secrets of the Lord,' I do not know of any that are more valuable than the secret of this shout of faith. The Lord said to Joshua, 'See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.' He had not said, 'I will give,' but 'I have given.' It belonged to them already; and now they were called to take possession of it. But the great question was, How? It looked impossible, but the Lord declared His plan."Now, no one can suppose for a moment that this shout caused the walls to fall. And yet the secret of their victory lay in this shout, for it was the shout of a faith which dared, on the authority of God's Word alone, to claim a promised victory, while as yet there were no signs of this victory being accomplished. And according to their faith God did unto them; so that, when they shouted, He made the walls to fall."God had declared that He had given them the city, and faith reckoned this to be true. And long centuries afterward the Holy Ghost recorded this triumph of faith in Hebrews: 'By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days'."
All the while I was reading that, He was speaking into my spirit. Though human words can do it no justice, it went something like, "Have I not been saying this to you all along? The thing you have laid at My feet, the thing you wish to overcome, the desires of your heart you wish to have...these are already yours. Take possession of it by way of your shout of faith."
For the past many months, God has been speaking very clearly and specifically to me. I've recorded much of what He has said to me in my spiritual journal, and as I look back over those notes from those months, it's the same repeating message. And yet I have doubted. Many times, I wrote in my journal, "Perhaps I'm hearing You incorrectly. Please confirm again, Lord." And a host of verses, sermons, conversations, articles, bizarre coincidences would unfold that would point singularly to the fact that He was indeed confirming that yes I was hearing Him correctly. I'd feel a surge of, "Okay, YES, I'm hearing You! I will press forward." Then a few days or weeks later, doubt would roll in, and the cycle would repeat. God is infinitely patient with me...really. Jesus called Peter out onto the water, and Peter jumped out of the boat. Then he doubted. I wonder if he had the passing thought of, "Maybe I didn't hear Him correctly. Maybe He didn't really call me to walk on water. What in the world am I doing out here as if I can walk on water?!" He doubted and began to sink.
That's me.
Hudson Taylor once said that unbelief is the greatest sin, and I found that to be true in my life too. It was not that I doubted that God COULD do what He said. I have NO DOUBT that He can and will do absolutely anything He says He will do...even the seemingly impossible. My doubt lay instead in whether I was hearing Him correctly. After all, if I'm going to stand up on the thin air of faith, I have to be POSITIVE that I'm hearing Him correctly. But, He taught me that if I really trust Him then I will also trust that He will let my ears hear correctly. When I ask Him to be clear, then I should trust that He WILL be clear. It's really ALL about my faith in Him...no matter how I slice it or dress it up.
I heard a pastor say once that he didn't like to tell other people HOW God spoke to him, because he feared that everyone would take that as the only way God speaks to people, when in reality God's speaks to us all in unique ways. I believe he's right. I think God speaks to different people in a myriad of different ways. For Gideon, it was through an angel. For Moses, it was through a burning bush. For Joseph, it was through a dream. For each and every person, His voice seems to be distinct. How He speaks to me and what He says may differ entirely from what and how He speaks to you. Because there's not a one-size-fits-all way that God speaks to everyone, we have to grow close to Him to get to know His voice.
If you read through many Bible accounts of people of great faith, you will see that first comes the message He gives them, and then often what will follow is a period of testing. He walked me through this season of letting me hear His voice but then threw in some huge tests. He removed nearly every human prop I had in my life. I was alone in a new place and felt abandoned in nearly every aspect and from nearly every angle. It was quiet...the kind of quiet that is deafening. Want a visual? Okay, imagine being torn away from all you know, being blindfolded and then thrown into a dark cell alone. Oh how I relate to Joseph!! And God tested my faith in that dark place. Did I trust Him? I mean REALLY trust Him? Did I trust that He alone would rescue me from the darkness? Did I trust Him to be all I needed while in the darkness? And did I trust that the words He spoke to me in the darkness were true enough to bank everything on...even if nobody else on the face of the planet had heard the words I had heard? Did I trust Him enough to step out onto the water?
And today's get-me-out-of-bed-with-a-message was to repeat with exclamation points the message He has been giving me recently: I must trust Him so emphatically that not only do I know I am hearing Him correctly...and not only do I believe that He WILL do what He said He will do...but to literally take possession of it by faith that He has already done the thing He said He's going to do. And THIS is raw, unedited, untainted FAITH...the very substance of the things we hope for.
And His most thrilling of secrets He shared with me today? "It was the shout of a faith which dared, on the authority of God's Word alone, to claim a promised victory, while as yet there were no signs of this victory being accomplished." Has He promised it? Did He say it? Then consider it DONE. By my shout of faith, I will walk into the victory that He has already promised.
How often do we read that "it was done to them according to their faith"? When truly grasped and reckoned as true, this secret will change my life...and yours.
