GROWING SEEDS: How To Hear The Voice of God

When I was in my mid-20's, I taught a Sunday School class full of 5-year-olds.  It was the Kindergarten class at our church and I felt with my limited knowledge of Bible stories, it was the perfect place for me to be.

However, I found out that 5-year-olds don't sit still...and they aren't quiet....and they have an attention span of about 3 seconds.   Having never had children and being the youngest in my family, this was shocking news to me!  I found myself each week frustrated and wondering how to either talk fast enough to get my point in the 3 seconds before their attention moved elsewhere, or increase the volume of my voice to where they could hear nothing but me. Unfortunately, this dog-and-pony show went on for better than a year and didn't work.

So I decided to have a special guest speaker come in and tell the kids a story.  I needed the break, but so did the Kindergartners.  As the kids were busy taking their shoes and socks off, messing up the kids' hair next to them, thumping their foreheads repeatedly, the storyteller, a petite woman named Sammie, started telling her story.  Actually, she whispered her story.  I found myself in the back of the room leaning in....desperate to hear what she was saying...and so did the kids.  The room for the first time ever was quiet.  They were still.  They were leaning in to hear what Sammie had to say.  She had taught us all the SECRET to listening.

“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks 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 came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. 

And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” 

(NIV) 1 Kings 19:11-12

In the words of the great writer Mark Batterson, "When someone speaks in a whisper, you have to get very close to hear.  We lean toward a whisper, and that’s what God wants.  The goal of hearing the Heavenly Father’s voice isn’t just hearing His voice; it’s intimacy with Him.  That’s why He speaks in a whisper."

Awwww...there it is!  God could intimidate us with His outside voice, but He woos us with a whisper.  And His whisper is the very breath of life.