Last night I was awoken at 1 am by the whine of our new puppy to go outside, as I stepped out the front door the stars where so bright they appeared as diamonds in the sky. The stillness of everything was so mesmerizing. I often wonder at how often God calls us into that realm just so we can hear the slight whisper of Him drawing us back to him. We are all so occupied by the things of this world and the noise of this world with all that is beaming around us that I think often we don't know how to even gather ourselves in a moment of silence. Almost, we wait in fear of possibly hearing God call out to us and the accountability that hearing and listening to his voice could cost us. After all.....it cost Paul everything, it cost Elijah everything, it cost Moses everything and Job lost everything being faithful to that call!
As most that are close to me know....my passion lies in the Old Testament. I love the stories of Samuel as he lay down and God called him out by name. I have to smile at just imagining his face each time that he went to Eli and said "you called?" and Eli says "no I didn't call you', only to realize that he was being called by the one true God! Then being told by Eli to go back and lay down and the next time he heard his name to reply "Speak, Lord for your servant is listening." YIKES, the accountability in that!!! Everything in me would perhaps wonder, "what is he calling me for....what is he calling me to," my mind would reel with the possibility that he would be calling me to something far greater than myself.
One of my favorite stories of the Old Testament is of Elijah after God had proven himself over and over. After God just revealed himself in the biggest way he could at Mt Carmel when the people where worshipping the god of Baal, he told Elijah to go gather the people, Elijah then built an alter to the Lord to sacrifice the bull on. The Lord instructed Elijah to pour water on the offering.....NOT just a little water but enough water that it filled the trench around the offering. I can so sense the fear and anxiety that Elijah had to have felt.....WHAT IF?! What if God doesn't show up and do what he says? How will I look after I have flooded the alter and have told the people to watch what the Lord will do and the sacrifice doesn't burn? How will I look if I've stepped out on this faith and God doesn't show up? But at that moment fire fell from heaven and it burnt up the offering and EVEN dried up the water in the trench!! BUT......many people stop there with the miracle not realizing in the very next chapter that Elijah fled out of fear for his very life. GOD found him hidden in a cave and called him out of the cave so that He could speak to him.
God began with "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah reported that all the prophets are dead and now they are trying to kill him too so he fled. The Lord said to Elijah, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." At that time that Elijah stepped out "A great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered rock before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper." Sometimes the storms brew all around us, the world is falling apart as we once knew it, but then the Lord calls us to a place where we can JUST hear his whisper.
That night standing under the stars, it wasn't the sound of a roaring voice.....but it was the sound of a gentle whisper that said "I have brought you to a time such as this.....now is the time!" The past 9 years have been the powerful wind that tore the mountains apart, the earthquake that has rocked my world and the fire that has seemed to consume all that I was. But today....in that dark sky of a night God says "I have brought you to this and through this....now its time to use it."
This place isn't a new place to me prior to my lyme I was in a place where I was using all that the Lord had allowed me to go through in my life, but I had asked him to sift me as he had allowed Peter to be sifted. Not knowing that being on the threshing floor and being stripped of everything that is of you and being built up in everything that is new could be such a painful process. TODAY....God is using it all. He has given me new life and a new health that is allowing me to do things that I could only dream of.
I'm so glad I was still enough to hear that whisper........
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