For God may speak in one way, or in another,
Yet man does not perceive it.
- Job 33:14
There is a God. He is alive. He will guide and direct and teach and comfort us. But what He most longs to do is draw us deeper into relationship with Him, to communicate to us His love. He speaks, but we can't always hear. There are times when God wants to make sure that He has someone's attention, that He will make Himself and His voice impossible to ignore, but that is rare.
Why? God can make Himself heard. Why be subtle? I think it's part of that whole free will thing. I have a feeling that God has one of those voices that if He doesn't turn the volume way down or filter His voice, when it's heard, things move. Like when He said let there be light and Lazarus, come forth. I don't think free will can exist within earshot of the unfiltered voice of God. And then there's God's desire to be desired.
Really, do you want the people who love you to listen to what you're saying because they care about you and want to hear you or because you get too loud to ignore? God wants us to want Him and to desire His voice. He wants us to seek awareness of His presence. That's one of the ways we're made in His image. It makes me happy that Leah wants to spend time with me. That being in my presence and just hanging out with me isn't a chore or a duty or something to do because she can't go do whatever it is that she'd rather be doing. She wants to spend time with me, and I want to spend time with her. That's what we long for in relationship, to be with someone who actually wants to be with us and who we want to be with. So why should it surprise us that God would prefer we spend time with Him because we want to instead of have to, need to or don't have anything better to do?
So in one sense, God is quiet, speaking in the whisper. He is subtle. If you don't want to look for Him, if you don't want to hear His voice, He will allow Himself to be ignored. Because He wants love, real love, and not to overwhelm us into giving Him a little of our precious time. But if you have a desire to see Him, seriously, you'll wonder how you ever missed the signs of His existence, presence and love for you. When we desire Him and delight in our relationship with Him, He will show Himself and make Himself known.
It's like listening to a favorite radio station. It's playing all the time. But I can't hear it. I have to turn on the radio, I have to want to hear something more than my own thoughts. But just turning on the radio won't necessarily make me able to hear the station. I have to tune it to the correct frequency. Though the signal is constantly there, if I don't tune in, I'll never hear it. Hearing God is similar to that. First I have to get out of self enough to hear anyone above the noise of my own thoughts. Turning my attention off of myself is like turning on the radio. It makes it possible to hear. It's step 1. But we don't want to just hear anything. We want to hear God. We want to be aware of His presence and love and be sensitive to His guidance and direction.
God doesn't speak to us all the same way. How He speaks to you may be different to how He speaks to me. He even speaks to us in more than one way. That's not strange. I can tell Leah I love her with a touch of my hand, with a look, with a kiss, with my voice, with a text, by making the bed, and more. God is infinitely more creative and versatile than we, so He finds different ways to tell us He loves us.
That can be frustrating if we just want Him to shout and be done with it. Why does He make it hard? But what if it being hard is just a matter of perspective? What if instead of thinking about it as difficult we see it as keeping it interesting and being creative? Then instead of being upset by the subtlety of God, we eagerly go through our day looking to see how many different ways and different times we can see and hear Him saying I love you to us. He may be subtle, but He's not silent. If we seek Him, we will find Him. If we desire to hear His voice and become willing to have Him speak to us as we need and as He wants instead of insisting that He can only speak to us at certain times, in certain places and certain ways will be amazed at how often and in how many ways we see His guiding hand, His providence, and, most of all, hear His message of love.
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