Hearing God in the Details
I have noticed a lot of people asking the same recurring question of late, in the short space of just two weeks, countless of you have asked us either face to face or commented on one of our social media pages this same question. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was a ‘buzz’ question in the body of Christ at the moment, but I believe it is in actuality an intentional stirring of hunger from the Holy Spirit himself. So, if you have been asking this question and feeling frustrated, take heart. Sometimes this ‘Holy frustration and dissatisfaction’ is stirred within us to hunger and search for more. So without further a due, that question has been; “how do you hear God so clearly, if, at all?” Usually followed by the frustration, “I can’t seem to hear Him, He seems silent with me.”
The Tapestry of Worth
My answer to this is through telling you a piece of my own story. I wanted to give you some insight into my own life journey. I have always found it helpful when I hear the process behind someone else’s journey because it is easy to assume that someone else has just landed in a place of ease in hearing God’s voice. One person wrote to me, ‘well it must be nice hearing God the way you do. How lucky for you.’ I wanted to reach out and hug this person because I get it. Oh, how I really do. I may be only 33, but boy have I walked a long and difficult road filled with insecurity, self-hate, frustration, disappointment, rejection and the feeling that God talked very little, if at all with me. Learning to hear God intimately has not been a walk amongst the daisies for me, nor has it been a matter of ‘luck’. I have had to fight to learn His voice. I may have been raised as a Pastors daughter and ‘knew’ the rulebook of how to’s, but walking it out was a very different story. I have had to wade through layers of the enemies muddy lies and choose over and over to trust in God’s promises despite not seeing anything come to pass in my immediate surroundings or feelings. While I do know that there are moments of instant breakthrough and there are those who are gifted with hearing His audible voice, for the most part, we all have a process that we have to walk through. I can tell you honestly, hearing God the way I do now has been a road of discovery and despite all the resistance I have encountered along the way, it has been well worth every single step.
I like to think of our relationships with God, our lives and our stories as a beautiful artwork of tapestry. While the front of the art itself can be easily appreciated and admired for its creator’s handiwork, you never see the back of the tapestry displayed. If you but turn the tapestry around and see it from behind you will discover what appears to be a big tangled mess of intertwining weavings. Only the tapestries creator understands and appreciates what went on behind the scenes to create the art piece. Likewise, you may feel as though you’re in a rut right now, you may be asking this same question, “how come I don’t hear from you, God?” Or, “why does my life feel like it’s a big mess and it seems like God doesn’t listen or respond.” “Does He even care?” Or, “Has God abandoned me?” You can rest assured that none of the above is true. God is weaving a beautiful story out of what appears to be in disarray right now. Your kind and caring Father is intricately weaving the disarray into an art piece, and while He never causes the mess, He knows how to create beauty out of the tangles. Your life story will be admired as a tapestry of great worth and intrinsic value.
It All Started With Two Ducks
Rewind to seven years ago and you honestly would have heard me asking every one of the above-mentioned questions, “Why don’t I hear from God? Where is He when I need Him? Why does it feel as though He has abandoned me in this chaos?” In fact, I repeated those words on a daily basis. In my mind it appeared that everyone had a running dialect with God except for me. In services where the Glory of God was falling, every single person in that room experienced some kind of manifestation. Except. For. Me. I thought my access lines to Him were blocked or malfunctioning. Maybe, He just didn’t care enough for me? Maybe, He was just as I had assumed Him to be, cruel and heartless, He obviously enjoyed playing this game where I was always last chosen or last to hear. I felt like that child on a team that was always picked last. How wrong I was. I was so fixated on comparing the way He was speaking to others through dreams, visions, prophetic words, manifestations and big extravagant ways that I completely overlooked the fact that He was ALREADY speaking to me, I just didn’t recognise Him. I had not been paying attention to His voice because I did not value it, I wanted the big booming voice of assurance and approval, when in actuality, He had been speaking to me all along in the little details.
Despite all my complaints, His pursuit of me was relentless. Slowly, but surely, I began to notice these little details and oddly enough, it started with two ducks. I began noticing two ducks absolutely everywhere I went. Suddenly they would be flying alongside my car, waiting for me as I drove by, sitting outside of café’s and even the entrance to our home, church and my workplace. Once I finally began to pay attention, I saw them more and more. Everywhere I went it was as though two ducks had followed me and I couldn’t escape them. Even the most bizarre locations where you would never expect to see a duck, there they were, waiting it seemed, for me to pass them by and then they would fly away. At first I thought I was going crazy and even considered one day the possibility of needing to see a psychiatrist. This went on for around six months on an almost daily basis. Yet, all the while I continued my complaints to God that He was not speaking to me. I’ll never forget sitting in a meeting one day when everyone began to break out in joy over a heavenly fragrance that burst into the room. Every person in that room could smell this fragrance including my own husband, but no matter how much I sniffed the air, it smelt stale to me. I sat down on my chair in a huff, angry at God that He had apparently left me out once again, when I heard a still small voice. “I’m not leaving you out, I’m teaching you to value my voice.”
That didn’t make me feel any better in the moment. “Why are you punishing me?” I whimpered. What I did not realise at the time was He was gently leading me into intimacy. He was not punishing me, but guiding me into intimacy with Him. The frustration I was feeling was an invitation to hunger after Him for myself. Where I had lived my whole Christian life dependant on other peoples ability to hear Him and others ability to pray for me when I needed prayer, He was guiding me into a place of depending upon His voice alone. Soon after this little tantrum of mine, the light bulb went off in my heart and for the first time ever I recognised that these two ducks had been sent by Him, time after time, to grab my attention. Yes, it seemed odd and strange, and at first I was kind of annoyed it was just ducks. Why could it not have been two big beaming angels? Yet, I could not deny that He was indeed speaking to me so I began researching about ducks. What on earth could they possibly mean?
Kingdom Treasure Hunts
Proverbs 25:2 in the Passion Translation says; ‘God conceals the revelation of His Word (a matter) in the hiding place of His glory. But the honor of Kings is revealed by how they thoroughly search out the deeper meaning of all that God says.’
I had no concept of this then, but the Father in His kindness had concealed a revelation for me hidden within these two, seemingly insignificant, and some would say, foolish ducks. My friends and I like to call it, ‘Kingdom treasure hunts,’ whereby a little clue is revealed and it is our Father’s great delight when we search it out. When I began to research about these two ducks, I discovered a revelation that spoke straight to my heart specifically for me in the time where I was feeling ‘left out’ and ‘unseen’ by Him. What spoke to my heart was that ducks fly north for the winter. In other words, they fly to a warmer climate away from the cold harsh landscapes of winter and into the warmth for rest. Where I had been striving and feeling barren, God was speaking to my heart to ‘rest’ in His warm embrace. Again, when I researched the fact that there were two ducks, I found that the number two in Hebrew points to an open door. Isaiah 22:22 says; I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
Immediately, I knew the Father was reassuring me that not only was He speaking to me, but that He was inviting me into the open door of His rest where intimacy and revelation flows. My reason for telling you that story is, I want to encourage you to listen for Him in the small details. He came to Elijah in the still, small wind and the reason He comes in the smallness is, only there does true relationship form. You have to lean in close to hear Him, pay attention and pause. Like a child sitting on their Fathers lap resting their head against His chest and hearing His heartbeat, we have to get close and value the whisper, especially in a noisy and chaotic world. I believe that in our current age there is more power in the quiet whispers of His Spirit than we give place and value to. While we have a generation that is obsessed with self, there is so much strength in laying ourselves down and intentionally pursuing His quiet voice, only there, in the surrender, does true greatness grow.
God Is Always Speaking
The Psalms are filled with lots of ‘Selah’ moments which means to pause and reflect. David modelled this well, He knew the power of the pause in reflecting and leaning into the stillness and the small and quiet echoes of the Holy Spirit’s whispers. It’s the pausing and reflecting where you will hear Him clearly, it’s paying attention to the seemingly insignificant details where He speaks the loudest. When you learn to value His voice in the little, His voice will grow louder and louder. So if I can encourage you with one thing today, it is this: He IS speaking to you. That is for certain, without a shadow of a doubt. He is speaking to you and He cares. Oh, how He cares. The question is, are you paying attention to the smallness of His voice? Are you leaning in and discovering what could otherwise be viewed as insignificant or foolish? Are you paying attention to the little details that He is strategically placing in front of you?
I can promise you this, you will be shocked to discover just how much He is speaking and in relentless pursuit of intimacy with you. Are you ready for the adventure?
