Daily Devotional

In this story found in 1 Kings 19 the prophet Elijah is told to go stand on a mountain and wait for God to pass by. There’s a huge, powerful wind that comes, followed by an earthquake, and then fire but God is not in any of these. Instead, God is in a low whisper.

What are the hallmarks of a whisper? You have to really pay close attention to it. It’s not flashy or attention grabbing. A whisper also causes someone to have to draw close. If you really want to hear someone whispering, you need to move closer to them and give them your attention.

I believe God can and does shout at times and does things that are attention grabbing, but it seems more often than not that He whispers. The problem I’ve found is that there is so much background noise in our busy modern lives that we often miss the whispers.
A few days ago, I was outside doing my quite time in the morning. I like to go out as the sun comes up and start my morning by praying and reading the Word. As I sat in my backyard, I heard lots of noises; cars driving by, a siren in the distance, and a lawn mower running. I’m used to such background noises and generally tune them out so that I don’t really notice but then something strange happened.

For about 30 seconds there was silence. The lawn mower stopped, the siren got out of range, and no cars drove by. In those precious and rare seconds, I heard something I didn’t notice before; birds chirping. They had been chirping the whole time I was out there but I didn’t notice because of all the background noise. Before too long more cars started driving by and a leaf blower fired up and the sound of the birds dissipated but now that I was aware of them, I could tune in and continue to hear them even with all the noise.

I think God is whispering every day, but we just forget to tune in and listen to His voice. If you have an opportunity somewhere in your day, try to silence the background noise of busyness and constantly moving onto the next thing. Pause for a moment and focus on God. Let’s be honest though, sometimes we just can’t turn down the noise in our overcrowded lives. Even with the noise we can stop, however briefly, and focus on God and tune into His voice. He’s whispering, we just need to draw close enough to hear.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.