FROM STREAMS IN THE DESERT
Today’s devotional is from “Streams in the Desert.” The author is unknown. This one spoke to me, and I thought it more relevant and poignant than anything I could write.
A woman who had made rapid progress in her understanding of the Lord was once asked the secret of her seemingly easy growth. Her brief response was, “Mind the checks.”
The reason many of us do not know and understand God better is that we do not heed His gentle “checks”–His delicate restraints and constraints. His voice is “a gentle whisper.” A whisper can hardly be heard, so it must be felt as a faint and steady pressure upon the heart and mind, like the touch of a morning breeze calmly moving across the soul. And when it is heeded, it quietly grows clearer in the inner ear of the hearer.
God’s voice is directed to the ear of love, and true love is intent upon hearing even the faintest whisper. Yet there comes a time when His love ceases to speak, when we do not respond to or believe His message. “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and if you want to know HIm and HIs voice, you must continually listen to HIs gentle touches.
So when you are about to say something in conversation with others and you sense a gentle restraint from His quiet whisper, heed the restraint and refrain from speaking. And when you are about to pursue some course of action that seems perfectly clear and right, yet you sense in your spirit another path being suggested with the force of quiet conviction, heed that conviction. Follow the alternate course, even if the change of plans appears to be absolute folly from the perspective of human wisdom.
If you desire to know God’s voice, never consider the final outcome o the possible results. Obey Him even when He asks you to move while you still see only darkness, for He HImself will be a glorious light within you. Then there will quickly spring up within your hear a knowledge of God and fellowship with Him, which will be overpowering enough in themselves to hold you and Him together, even in the most severe tests and under the strongest pressures of life.
Be blessed. Be encouraged.
