31 Days: Listening to God speak through Others

Have you ever experienced God speaking to you specifically through another person? I have.

About tens years ago I was going through a period of real struggle over the fact that I was still single in my thirties. A good friend had been walking that journey with me, and as she was praying for me God gave her some verses of scripture and a word that he wanted me to ‘rejoice’ and ‘be joyful’, despite that the fact that we had seen no answers to prayer.

She sent me a note to share the words and the scripture reference. It was Habakkuk 3:17-19. You may be familiar with it.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.
Habakkuk 3:17-10

I’d like to say I was greatly encouraged, and immediately received this word with joy. In reality, I sobbed my heart out. I felt like the fig that does not bud and the vines without grapes. All I felt was lack. I didn’t see all the other ways God had blessed me, not least the incomparable gift of Himself.

He loved me enough to speak specifically to me though my friend, and he’d been trying to get my attention for a while. The same verses were in a birthday card my friend had sent me the year before. I’d just never gotten around to looking up the reference. God was speaking to me even then, but I wasn’t listening.

Learning to ‘rejoice’ and ‘be joyful’ was a milestone in my journey with God, because it taught me to see beyond my circumstances, beyond my own desire for a husband, to the One who desires to be first and foremost in my heart.

Do you have a story to share in the Comments?

Photo Credit: krwlms via Compfight cc

This is Day 28 of the series 31 Days to Listen.

31 Days: Listening to Lessons from The Wrong Book

The thing about listening to God is that his methods are not always predictable. Sometimes he speaks in ways that are as unexpected as they are profound. One of those occasions for me came through The Wrong Book by Nick Bland.

Yes, The Wrong Book. It’s a children’s book. A children’s picture book.

It’s the story of a boy named Nicholas Ickle. At least it’s meant to be his story…

Here’s the interactive iPad version wonderfully narrated by Frank Woodley. Please take a few minutes to enjoy the book before you read on.

What I learnt from The Wrong Book

So here’s my grown-up take on this wonderful story. Nicholas Ickle has a plan. This book is about him. Except that all these page-crashers, these uninvited book guests, keep showing up to spoil his plan. And that makes him angry because his expectation of telling his story is not being met.

But Nicholas Ickle is still telling his story, because surely he is a little boy who dreams of elephants and monsters, pirates and puppets. That’s why they came. They may be in the Wrong Book but they show us something of Nicholas Ickle anyway. The book is still about Nicholas, just not in the way he imagined.

Isn’t that what life can be like for us? Our perfect plans for our lives never seem to quite work out that way. All the interruptions, the unexpected people and events that show up in our lives, mess up our schedules and feed our plans through the shredder. We don’t see that they are still part of our story; we only see that things aren’t the way we planned them.

We have a choice though, to embrace the book-crashers in our lives. To forgive the intrusion, to allow them to enrich our story, to teach us new things, to make new friends, to grow, to love. To even be grateful for their presence. Our story is still our story.

And something else…

I noticed how much my thought life, my prayer life, can look like Nicholas Ickle and The Wrong Book. Uninvited thoughts; things I call distractions come in unwanted. Resented even. They detour me away from where I thought I was going. They’re messy or ugly, self-seeking, petulant or just plain off the point.

I don’t want to embrace them; they’re off the plan. I’m angry that my thoughts and prayers have been hijacked. But what if they too are really part of my story? What if they are telling the bigger truth of my story, not just the small, edited, clean version I had planned for myself?

The more I thought about this book, the more I saw the invitation in it. Would I be like Nicholas Ickle, angry and upset? Or would I embrace my story-crashers and tell a bigger story than I’d originally planned?

And later, came the God-whisper:

Listen.

Grace.
Receive grace.
Receive my presence.

I already love you. Stop trying to please me. Stop trying to earn my approval.

Know that you are loved.
Receive the gift of my presence.

Be open to to all the ways I speak to you.
Look for me.
Make time for me.
Wait for me.
Listen.
Be willing to let go of the old ways.

Embrace life.
Embrace love.
Embrace the messy, the unexpected, the story-crashers.

In what unexpected ways is God speaking to you?

This is Day 26 of the series 31 Days to Listen. Visit Write 31 Days to see what hundreds of other writers are posting for this challenge.

31 Days: Who would we rather listen to?

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

Exodus 20:18-21

We show how little love we have for God by preferring to listen to His servants rather than to Him. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we don’t want God Himself to speak to us. Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? Perhaps it’s because we know that when God speaks we know we have only two choices: Either we will do what He asks, or tell Him we will not obey. But if it is simply one of God’s servants speaking to us, we feel obedience is optional, not imperative.

~Oswald Chambers

 

This is Day 25 of the series 31 Days to Listen.