“Your question to me might very well be: ‘What do I do now? How do I let God decide? How do I know what he wants me to do? How do I know what his will is? How do I hear God’s voice?’
“If any of you have found such questions in your minds since our last talk together about these things, I hope today’s discussion will help you begin listening to your heavenly Father in new and more personal ways.”
Rev. Rutledge paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. You could sense an anticipation in the air. Nobody was close to falling asleep. You could tell everyone was eager for what he had to say. After all, what could possibly be more exciting in all the world than actually learning to hear the Creator’s voice . . . just like Moses did!
“Let me repeat my question: How do I hear God’s voice?”
Another brief pause.
“Now, these days God doesn’t usually speak loudly and forcefully and audibly like he did to Moses. His voice is much softer. Moses couldn’t help hearing God, because God thundered to him from the mountain. For us the situation is completely reversed. We can help it. In fact, we won’t hear him at all unless we train ourselves to listen with a different set of senses than most men and women know much about.
“Hear me well, my friends. I will repeat what I just said: We must train ourselves to listen with a different set of senses if we want to hear God’s voice speaking to us. Even the words I am using—hearing and listening—are inaccurate because they imply that what we are listening for is an audible voice that we will hear with our ears.
“We actually need different words to describe the process because God’s voice isn’t usually audible. It’s a different kind of hearing that you do with the heart, not your ears.”
The minister paused, took a deep breath, then began again in more of a teaching than a preaching tone.
“I would like to take you through this process I speak of,” he said. “For it to work, of course, each of you have to try it for yourselves. But I will do my best to tell you as simply as I can what I have found works for me.
“First, find someplace quiet where you can be alone with your God for a few minutes. Remember, you are his child. He is your Father. All you have to do, therefore, is ask him what he would have you do. Very simply say to him, ‘Father, I ask you to show me what you want me to do in this situation. I seek your will, and I will do what you say. My desire is to do what you want me to, so please tell me what that is.’
“That is all there is to asking, though certainly not in knowing what to do, which comes later. There doesn’t have to be a great deal of fanfare in order to turn something over to the Lord. It is an act of relinquishment that is required, not a long pious prayer. It is very quiet and inward, just between your will and his will. It is just the act of saying, ‘Here, Father, I put this into your hands.’
“We can say ‘Here’ to God anytime.” As Rev. Rutledge said this he held out both of his hands toward us.
“If you want to do what God wants, your will is in a subordinate position to his. If you are still wrestling with whether or not to follow your will or his—as we all do from time to time—then the spiritual battle is not yet one of hearing the Lord’s voice but of relinquishment itself, of deciding which side of the fence you are going to come down on in determining your course of action.
“But once the battle of relinquishment has been fought and you want to do God’s will, then you can very quietly and deliberately and honestly ask him to speak to you . . . and you can be sure he will.
“I am absolutely convinced that in such circumstances as these, God delights in such an honest and humble prayer as ‘Father, show me what you want me to do’ and that he will answer such a request.
“In my view, one of the chief impediments to God’s speaking to his children is simply this: Our ears are plugged because our own wills are still heavily involved in determining our motives and attitudes and priorities.”
As I listened to Rev. Rutledge, I thought of what Christopher had said when he and I were talking about Jennie and Tom several weeks earlier. He could be preaching this exact same sermon!
“I do not for a moment say I have conquered this either,” Rev. Rutledge continued. “We struggle all our lives with our own wills. It is intrinsic to the humanity of our condition. But we grow capable of hearing from God to the extent that we relinquish our wills and yield them into his. The relinquishment of our own wills removes the wax from our spiritual ears and allows us to hear the still, small voice of God’s Spirit.”
He paused, cleared his throat, and waited a few minutes. Some people shifted about in their seats.
“Now,” he went on, “what comes next? Having asked your Father what to do . . . what then?
“It is now time to wait. You can put the decision out of your mind. ‘Be not anxious,’ we are told . . . ‘Fret not.’ The time has come to obey such commands.
“The still, small voice of God’s speaking direction into your heart and mind is most often a slow process. We are quick-answer people, but God is not always a quick-answer God.
“It may take a while. You may not feel you know what you are supposed to do concerning what you have prayed about for six months, perhaps more. If you have relinquished the matter into his hands and your own will is not vying to gain a hearing, then the Lord will speak in due time.
“When I speak of waiting, however, I do not mean passive waiting—merely letting time pass while you do nothing. I speak rather of active waiting. It is the attitude a servant adopts when he is waiting on his master. It is an attitude of vigilant readiness, all senses alert and awake and awaiting the master’s summons. We wait, but with our eyes wide and our faces turned toward our Father.
“We wait, and what happens next?
“Too often, we simply grow impatient. We grow weary of the waiting. Doesn’t the Lord know how desperate we are for an answer? we say. Does he not realize the urgency?
“How many of you have felt such things?”
Rev. Rutledge paused with a smile. “I see by your nods that you know what I am speaking about. I, too, have grown impatient with the Lord more times than I like to remember.
“And then what happens?
“Then we make one of two mistakes. Either we decide to just go ahead on our own, or we try to convince ourselves that we have heard the Lord and likewise just forge ahead.
“Yet if our own impatience is behind the so-called ‘leading,’ what have we really heard? Only our own desires. You have heard me say it many times, and I will remind you of it again—God’s purposes cannot be rushed. Human impatience is yet another blockage to divine leading.”
He drew in a breath, then continued.
“But let us move forward and talk about what it is like when the season of patient and prayerful waiting has borne its fruit and at last the Lord does begin to truly speak his leading into your heart. What, you may be asking yourself, does God’s leading actually feel like?
“There have been very few signs and wonders in my life, no visions or audible messages from on high. But I have witnessed the Lord’s leading over and over. He has been speaking direction to me for the ten or fifteen years in which I have come to be open to it, although in very quiet and almost invisible ways.
“Thus I am absolutely convinced that the prayer, ‘Lord, show me what to do,’ when prayed humbly and honestly and without one’s own will in the way, will result in some kind of direction from him.
“So, how do you hear it, feel it?” Rev. Rutledge asked.
“Usually it is a sense that grows steadily stronger and stronger that such-and-such a course of action is the right one. God speaks through your brain, through your thoughts, and he also speaks to your heart, indicating a very quiet sense of peace, of ‘rightness’—or, if he is directing you differently, of ‘wrongness’—about the thing you feel inclined to pursue.
“I call it a sense that grows steadily stronger. Think of it, perhaps, as a divine pressure on your inward being
that either says, ‘This is right’ or that makes you feel uncomfortable. As long as your wishes in the matter are not influencing this pressure, then these quiet and subtle feelings are ones you can learn to trust as coming in response to your prayers.
“As these feelings and thoughts begin to come, and you begin to think they may be in answer to your prayer, you can add the following to your conversations with him: ‘Lord, it seems you may be indicating that you want me to do such-and-such or not to do such-and-such. I ask you to confirm whether this is truly your voice. If not, tell me otherwise.’
“Then again, you can rest, and wait for him to answer this new prayer. Either the sense of leading, the divine pressure or discomfort, will grow stronger, or it will diminish.”
He paused and chuckled good-naturedly.
“I understand how vague this all may sound to you this morning,” he went on. “It would be much easier if the Lord sent telegrams with direct and specific messages to us. But that is not his way, because it would not be best for us. It would not teach us to trust him, to be patient, and it would not enable us to learn his ways through the long, slow, silent, invisible obediences of life. And it would not help us learn to listen.
“This process of learning to attune ourselves to God’s still, small voice is foundational to the walk of faith. This is what Jesus was doing constantly, what he did when he arose a great while before day to be alone with his Father in the hills.
“It is a vague and subtle process. There are no lists anyone can write down that will automatically tell everyone in every set of circumstances ‘how to know God’s will.’ God did not intend there to be.
“Jesus said we are to follow his example. He said he did not do anything except what his Father told him to do. He did not specify how exactly we are to do that same thing. Clearly, though, he gave us all the information we are supposed to have.
“Therefore, we have to learn to hear the still, small voice without benefit of lists and telegrams. That is the process of growth. That is the walk of faith. That is the reality of John 15—abiding in the vine so that the life, that is the will, of the Father more and more flows into us and through us.”
Chapter 39
Christopher’s Quandary
All the way home from church, Christopher was real quiet. It was hard not to think it had something to do with me, even though my brain told me it surely didn’t.
As soon as we got home he saddled up his horse.
“I’m going for a ride, Corrie,” he said somberly.
“Christopher, what is it?” I asked.
“Avery’s sermon really got into me,” he said. “I’ve never heard another man preach quite like he has recently.”
“But, Christopher, I’ve heard you say almost the same things.”
“Perhaps. But hearing them from someone else always makes it slightly different. Something has come over Avery that is powerful. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was sitting there riveted to his every word. It is just how I wanted my preaching to effect people—convict them deeply so they would be able to live their faith practically. Now his preaching is doing just that to me!”
“What does that have to do with going for a ride?”
“I have to be alone, Corrie. I have to do what Avery said. There are some things I have been struggling with. I have to ask what God wants me to do. I have to know what his will is. I can’t just listen to a sermon like that and then not apply it where I most need the Lord’s direction in my own life.”
He wheeled the mare around and rode off.
Christopher was gone two hours. When he walked into the bunkhouse, I could tell he was temporarily at peace, but his red eyes showed that whatever he was going through was a struggle that went deep.
“Can’t you tell me what it is?” I asked.
“Not yet, Corrie,” he replied. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
An awkward silence followed. He sat down. I fixed a pot of coffee and began heating up some cold stew I had saved him from dinner. Gradually we began to talk and found ourselves discussing the sermon we had heard that morning.
“Do you really think,” I asked, “that people are as inexperienced as he said at asking for and then listening to God’s voice?”
“Yes,” replied Christopher thoughtfully, “I suppose I do. I’m not sure I could think of a single individual whom I knew in my church back in Richmond who ran his or her life that way. I’m not saying there were none, only that I didn’t know of them—they didn’t make that aspect of their walk with God known to me.”
“It would seem that asking God what he wants and then waiting for him to tell you would be the most normal part of being a Christian.”
“It was for Jesus. But it’s not nearly so natural for us.”
“Why?” I asked. “Is it because we aren’t trained to hear God’s voice like Rev. Rutledge said this morning?”
“We don’t train ourselves in it. Usually our own wills are so involved that we place ourselves in a position where it will be very difficult to hear when the Lord does speak. When one’s own will remains strong, prayers may go up, but a thick brick wall remains that can prevent the still, small voice from penetrating. That is why so many pray, yet hear little from God. It takes an abandonment of what I want to enable one to detect what God wants.”
“How do you abandon what you want? It seems like a contradiction.”
“Just as Jesus did. His prayer in the garden represents the climax of the biblical account and the Gospel story—’Father, not my will but your will be done.’ What happened on the cross the next day, in a sense, was only the natural working out of that prayer. Theologians may disagree with me, but I believe the victory was won in the garden even more significantly than on the cross. Jesus’ own will was utterly abandoned, laid down, relinquished. Thus was Satan defeated. And therein was our Lord’s very practical example given to us.”
“How is that an example to us? We won’t face what Jesus did.”
“Not many will be called upon to die on a cross, that is true. But we are all called to the garden with Jesus.”
“You mean to give up our own wills?”
“Exactly! To lay down what we want in favor of what God may want. When we do as he did, and pray the prayer he prayed, and mean it—then is Satan defeated in our lives too. The enemy cannot touch us when our wills are abandoned into the Father’s.”
Christopher sighed. “But I’m no better off than my former parishioners,” he said. “I certainly didn’t hear much from God this afternoon. And I don’t know whether or not my own will in the matter has been relinquished.”
“But you heard what Rev. Rutledge said, that God’s answers take time. What did you expect, an instant answer?”
Christopher laughed.
“I suppose I fell right into the trap he warned about,” he said. “Good old impatience . . . though I have already been praying about the question for some time.”
It was quiet for a while. I could tell Christopher was thinking. A moment later a little smile came to his lips.
“What?” I said.
“I was just thinking about how you and I met,” replied Christopher, now smiling in earnest, “how we came to love each other.”
“What could that possibly have to do with all this?” I laughed.
“Everything!” Christopher replied. “Don’t you see—it’s wonderful how it all ties in. God led us together, right?”
I nodded.
“But not by miracles and trumpets—”
“It was sort of a miracle,” I said.
“You’re right,” Christopher laughed, “but it happened more through quiet ways that worked themselves out in our daily lives. It’s just like Avery was saying—you have to wait patiently for the still, small voice to speak.”
“I’m still not sure quite how it all ties in.”
“I believe in miracles,” said Christopher. “But I believe that God’s normal mode of working in most lives is quiet
and almost invisible, that the most important spiritual growth occurs not through observing or even participating in signs and wonders, but through the quiet and invisible obediences of a life lived in ongoing, moment-by-moment relinquishment of the will. We grow as we make Jesus’ garden prayer the undergirding perspective of our entire being, ‘Father . . . your will be done.’ Therein do the roots go down that will produce a life of maturity and wisdom and fruitfulness in the kingdom. Therein are sons and daughters fashioned into the likeness of Christ.”
I tried to take in the magnitude of Christopher’s words. Sometimes he could say such beautiful things about how God worked!
“So you see,” he went on, “you and I were both going about the work we had been given to do until the day came when I suddenly found you lying beside the road unconscious. Neither of us could have known that our lives would be changed forever by that moment. We were not aware that God was making his will known right then. But I believe God was able to work so profoundly through that moment because we had both previously given direction for our lives to him. That is what enabled him to do it.”
“Now,” I said, “what does all that have to do with this morning’s sermon?”
Again Christopher laughed.
“You are not going to let me off until you find out what it is that I have been praying about, are you?”
“All is fair in love and war, as they say.”
“This isn’t war.”
“But isn’t all fair in love and theology too? Haven’t I heard you say that?”
“I’ve never said such a thing!” laughed Christopher.
“Well, it sounds like something you would say,” I rejoined.
We joked a little more, but then the conversation grew serious once again.
“Do you think very many of the people who were there this morning will do what Rev. Rutledge suggested?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It may be more than we think. I have been very impressed with the general spiritual maturity in Miracle Springs. I can tell that Avery Rutledge has been steadily adding meat to the spiritual diet of his flock, probably for years.”
The Braxtons of Miracle Springs Page 17