Imagine you and I head into the wilderness to spend time with God. Life slows down when we leave the city where we are stressed, anxious, and too busy. In the wilderness, there are no honking horns. Phones don’t ring. Notifications are off. No one looks at email or social media. It’s freedom and peace.
One day we find a cave. It’s cool inside and we sit down. Then as we get up to leave, it’s suddenly too dangerous. A roaring wind picks up, loud as a passing locomotive. The mountain is coming apart, rocks are falling and bouncing, the cliffs above are breaking off, boulders crushing trees. We cannot take another step.
Suddenly the wind stops and things are quiet. Until the earthquakes begin. The earth pitches and rolls like a ship in a storm.
But suddenly the earth is still and the wind is still.
“What just happened?”
“I don’t know. You want to get out of this cave?”
But before we can answer, fire breaks out. Suddenly everything is red and smoky. There is a forest fire in all directions, but we are safe inside the cave. We stand there staring until the heat makes us turn away.
“What is God doing? He sure got my attention.”
Suddenly the fire goes out. All is still and quiet. We look at each other and we hear a still, small voice. God speaks quietly, explaining that He was not in the wind, though He controls the wind. He was not in the earthquake, though He controls the earthquake. He was not in the fire, though He controls fire. God was in the still, small voice. 1 Kings 19:11-12.
A week later we are back in the city—stressed, anxious, and too busy. But we learned something: if we want to hear God’s voice, we need to get away from the wind, the earthquakes, and the fires—all the noisy distractions—and find a quiet place where we can hear His STILL, SMALL VOICE.
That’s why they call it A QUIET TIME. God will not compete for your attention: you must regularly give Him 100% of your attention or you will rarely hear His voice.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 