Hearing His Voice #311

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

Psalm 42:7, NIV

One-way communication with God isn’t enough. We need more than prayers that soar upward and may or may not, for all we know, hit an invisible target. This shot-in-the-dark approach to interaction with God may be okay for people who haven’t yet recognized their true hunger for Him, but those of us who seek a deeper relationship need more. After all, is it really a relationship if the communication goes only one way? Or if it consists only of the written word apart from living interaction? We can’t be content with anything less than a heart-to-heart connection.

God offers us that, and in abundance. But it doesn’t happen superficially. The place of real two-way communication with Him is the place in our hearts where we have the deepest issues, scars, and needs. We will tend to hear Him in areas in which we have been most profoundly battered and bruised. When we cry out to Him for guidance or encouragement, He often speaks to us “off topic” before He addresses the deepest need. Perhaps He does so to test our commitment to His voice, even when it isn’t scratching our worst itch. But He always comes back to that need. Deep calls to deep, and it’s rarely in a comfortable place. Not surprisingly, it’s in the depths.

Don’t be afraid of the depths—or the waves and breakers of life. Those who have the richest relationship with God have developed it in some pretty painful places. We wish it didn’t have to be this way, but usually it does. High callings seem to require some low experiences. Revelations of light seem to come most often in places of mystifying darkness. And life seems to flourish most plentifully out of deathly wounds. Out of the depths, God speaks.

Lord, I want to connect with the deepest parts of Your Spirit in the depths of mine. Is there any other way than in the midst of life’s tumultuous seas? Even if not, this is worth it. Let the noise of the breakers give way to the sound of Your voice.