Getting quiet to hear God’s voice
Do you remember standing in the gymnasium at school during free play, when every voice would, literally, bounce off the walls?
Kids shouted, P.E. teachers told us to stop throwing balls at the ceiling, and at some point, those magic little seats on wheels (you know, the kind that crushed your fingers if you didn’t you’re your hands in exactly the right place?) would get pulled out and beautiful chaos ensued.
Everyone talked at the same time and every voice was magnified, and no one could hear anything. We spoke louder and louder to be heard over the din, only making the problem worse and worse.
I remember being in the gym feeling completely surrounded, but completely alone with myself, hearing only the jumbled voices of the multitude. It felt like being inside a little bubble of thought.
Somehow it was easier to find myself in this bubble as a child, than it is as an adult, navigating the voices shouting their words at us from all sides.
If an opinion is what I want to hear, I don’t have to look far to find one (or twenty-seven hundred). The voices of all the people on social media, in particular, feels a little like they’re shouting at me from every angle.
The low hum of voices follows me as I carry my phone through the day, and that low hum of voices turns into a low hum of anxiousness I’m not even aware of until I put my phone down for the evening.
Rising early in the morning to spend time with God, to read, and to write in the quiet darkness provides a centering effect for my day. Rather than beginning the day already surrounded on all sides by the extra voices, I find that beginning my day in the quiet makes it easier to quiet those voices.
If I place a high value on the voices of others and their opinions, I have a hard time, not only distinguishing my voice, but also hearing God’s voice out of the multitude.
That is not to say we shouldn’t value certain voices in our lives. We absolutely should value the voices of others, like family and friends, in our daily life, especially, and we should strive to value and magnify the voices of the marginalized and underrepresented in our society.
That’s my disclaimer.
But when my attitude shifts from a healthy place of sharing the mic to leaning so heavily on the thoughts and opinions of others that I don’t even know my own, there’s a problem.
Knowing and naming my thoughts is how I learn to distinguish them, voice them, and own them as things I believe.
There’s an even bigger problem when those voices drown out the voice of my loving, heavenly Father, who delights in me seeking His voice and who desires to speak to me.
Just like being in the gym all those years ago drowned the voices of every child and adult in the room, when we fill our soul with the voices of everyone around us, we aren’t going to be able to hear God when He whispers His word to us.
I’m still very much in the process of learning, but I know if my soul feels too frantic from giving my attention to too many voices it won’t be quiet enough to hear the Lord’s.
God desires to speak to me, but if my heart is tuned to the wrong channel(s) I won’t hear anything but the static of a thousand voices all speaking at once and clamoring to be heard over the others.
Beginning the practice of intentionally moving into a quiet space to hear from the Lord and learn from His word has opened my heart to receive His gentle whispers of direction and counsel.
