Hearing His Voice #111

Come close to God, and God will come close to you.

James 4:8

One day early in her mission service in India, as Amy Carmichael sat under a tree studying her Tamil grammar, she had a growing sense of a listener, a presence she could not ignore. She recognized the Lord and listened with Him—to the gaping needs of the country, the blood crying out from the ground, the calling of a people to Himself. Time stood still. The presence was all that mattered.

Of her later work with orphans, young girls serving as temple prostitutes, and boys roaming the streets, Carmichael wrote that she sometimes saw Jesus kneeling alone in prayer for them, and she would go and kneel with Him. She sensed an unspoken communion with Him in His love and compassion for the unlovely, broken, wounded people of the world. No words needed to be exchanged in this spiritual conversation; it was a blending of hearts to accomplish divine purposes. She drew close to God, and He drew close to her.

The voice of God is often far deeper than words, and sometimes even deeper than pictures or images. He has ways of making His heartbeat known to those whose hearts are inclined toward His. The sensitive spirit will not insist on breaking the conversation down into words. Words might interrupt the conversation altogether. Heart-to-heart knowledge goes deeper and must not be cheapened by trying to define it. In God’s presence, the best response is simply to embrace the profound work He is doing, to yield our hearts to His impulses, and to accept that His love is indescribable and beyond understanding. In that yielding, He expresses the inexpressible and imparts the infinite flow of His own feelings. And the hearer knows He has spoken, even though He has not spoken a word.

Lord, may I know You to that extent in the depths of my being. Work Your heart into the depths of mine, even when no words can describe what You have placed there. Share Your deepest impulses with me.