Hearing The Voice of God

Last night, our daughter was reading her devotional, and somehow the conversation drifted toward what it means to hear the voice of God. Not in a mystical way. Not in a dramatic way. Just honestly. What does it mean to say that God speaks?

It brought me back to the prophet Elijah in one of my favorite passages, 1 Kings 19:11–13.

The prophet Elijah stands on the mountain and everything we would expect to carry God’s voice rushes past him. A wind strong enough to split rock. An earthquake. A fire. These are the kinds of movements that command attention. They feel unmistakable, like this must be where God is.

But God was not in them.

Then came what the text calls the sound of a gentle whisper. A thin silence. And when Elijah heard it, he covered his face and stepped out. Not because it was loud. Not because it was dramatic. But because in the gentleness he recognized he was standing before the Holy One.

There is a paradox here that runs through Scripture and through our own lives.

The all-powerful Creator of the universe, the One who conquers death and bends history toward redemption, chooses to speak through what can almost be missed. He does not compete with noise. He does not overwhelm. He reveals Himself in a quiet nearness, one that could almost be missed.

It is the same mystery we glimpse when glory is wrapped in swaddling cloths. Power restrained. Majesty made small. Not diminished, but near enough to hold.

Years ago, I sat with a patient who had coded and been brought back. He spoke of encountering a great light and hearing a voice. What struck me was not the light, but how he described the voice. He said he heard it within him. Not at a distance but within his being, calling him son.

That has always stayed with me.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Some will be marked with dust. We will hear the reminder that we are finite. Perhaps this is also an invitation to quiet the wind and earthquake of our own making. To step away from the noise long enough to attend to nearness.

Because the voice of God is not absent.

It is often simply gentle.

And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is become still enough to realize that the whisper has been there all along.

Authored by: Josh Winn