“God whispers to us in our pleasure, but He shouts to us in our pain.” C.S. Lewis quoted in a Daily Hope Devotion by Rick Warren titled “Turning in to God”.
Reading this quote from Rick Warren reminds me of a story in the Bible, The story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11. God told Elijah to go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord and wait for the Lord to pass by. As Elijah stood there a great and powerful wind came but God wasn’t in the wind. Then an earthquake shook the ground but God wasn’t in the earthquake. After that a fire came but He wasn’t in the fire either. After the fire along came a gentle whisper in which the voice of the Lord was in.
If Elijah hadn’t been paying attention he would have missed God altogether thinking once the gentle whisper showed up that must have been it but it wasn’t over. Too often that is what we do. God doesn’t show up in the fashion we think He should so before He even has a chance to get there we’ve walked away and we miss out on His presence.
In our flawed logic we figure God isn’t present because pain is. After all, if God was such a loving God then I wouldn’t be in this pain in the first place so He must not be around. From there the only shouting we hear in our pain is the groaning of our own complaining heart. The sounds of pity parties being thrown, “why me” lists being checked off. We get overwhelmed with the noises we are making to the point we miss the voice of the Lord.
We think He’s shouting at us alright! Yelling at us and punishing us for some reason as being the source of our pain. Boy do we have it all wrong. In our pleasure we can be heard celebrating and gloating over all that we have done and the whisper of God’s voice goes by unnoticed. On the other extreme in the midst of pain we continue to try to “out voice” Him by complaining about our hard times.
God is shouting to us to get us to hang on, to reach out to Him, to learn and to grow from our experiences. Constantly He’s doing all He can to get us to find right paths down narrow roads. He’s shouting to us to get us to follow His voice home. He’s not shouting, “You no good fool, you made your bed now lie in it.” He’s shouting, “Take up your mat and follow me.”
Whisper or shout it doesn’t matter God’s voice is there and we need to be like Elijah and stand there waiting for it to pass by. If it passes by unnoticed that’s our fault. We need to be listening and stop demanding it come packaged in the wrapping of our choice.
Silence! God is speaking and all we have to do is listen. You can’t get any simpler than that, via the voice of God.
© 2010 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing
Reading this quote from Rick Warren reminds me of a story in the Bible, The story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11. God told Elijah to go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord and wait for the Lord to pass by. As Elijah stood there a great and powerful wind came but God wasn’t in the wind. Then an earthquake shook the ground but God wasn’t in the earthquake. After that a fire came but He wasn’t in the fire either. After the fire along came a gentle whisper in which the voice of the Lord was in.
If Elijah hadn’t been paying attention he would have missed God altogether thinking once the gentle whisper showed up that must have been it but it wasn’t over. Too often that is what we do. God doesn’t show up in the fashion we think He should so before He even has a chance to get there we’ve walked away and we miss out on His presence.
In our flawed logic we figure God isn’t present because pain is. After all, if God was such a loving God then I wouldn’t be in this pain in the first place so He must not be around. From there the only shouting we hear in our pain is the groaning of our own complaining heart. The sounds of pity parties being thrown, “why me” lists being checked off. We get overwhelmed with the noises we are making to the point we miss the voice of the Lord.
We think He’s shouting at us alright! Yelling at us and punishing us for some reason as being the source of our pain. Boy do we have it all wrong. In our pleasure we can be heard celebrating and gloating over all that we have done and the whisper of God’s voice goes by unnoticed. On the other extreme in the midst of pain we continue to try to “out voice” Him by complaining about our hard times.
God is shouting to us to get us to hang on, to reach out to Him, to learn and to grow from our experiences. Constantly He’s doing all He can to get us to find right paths down narrow roads. He’s shouting to us to get us to follow His voice home. He’s not shouting, “You no good fool, you made your bed now lie in it.” He’s shouting, “Take up your mat and follow me.”
Whisper or shout it doesn’t matter God’s voice is there and we need to be like Elijah and stand there waiting for it to pass by. If it passes by unnoticed that’s our fault. We need to be listening and stop demanding it come packaged in the wrapping of our choice.
Silence! God is speaking and all we have to do is listen. You can’t get any simpler than that, via the voice of God.
© 2010 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing
5 comments:
Karen, I loved when you ended this post with:
"Silence! God is speaking and all we have to do is listen. You can’t get any simpler than that, via the voice of God."
I think we tend to not spend the time to listen to His voice. He's always there. It's us that moves. :)
Btw, Loni pointed out to me that C.S. Lewis is the author of the quote I chose for today. I guess Rick Warren was referring to it in the devotional post I read. I'm sorry about that and changed it on my post.
Blessings,
Debbie
Love it! It is easy for us to miss the voice of God because he doesn't "show up" the way we expect. Great reminder for us to wait until we hear it.
Such a nice post.
I like to think that if God is shouting in our pain, His shouts are shouts of encouragement - as you have stated. Just as we yell for our favorite sports team, God is yelling in our pain to encourage us to keep doing our best, especially when life in hard.
Thanks for the reminder to LISTEN!
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