Can You Hear Me Now?
By Ami Vielehr

Whenever I feel a little dry in my spirit, I always go to a well-worn devotional called “My Utmost for His Highest.” I go there because it’s a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, Dr. Phil kind of devotional. I like to call it my spiritual whooping.

It’s very old, and written in a vernacular that’s a tad difficult to understand, but each time I go there God speaks to me through the words of a man named Oswald Chambers.

The basic premise of the passage was that God is always speaking to us. Whether we hear him or not depends on our awareness of his presence. There are certain ways that we can be in the God Zone, where we hear him even when he speaks in that still small voice.

I thought about this “awareness,” and realized that, often, I am in the thick of life and it is hard to hear. Like when my four year-old wants me to stop everything I am doing and hold her, or when my fourteen year-old wants to “just talk” at 11:30 p.m. when I have already been asleep for two hours. Or when my eldest is nervous about wrestling, and asks me to pray for him. Yet, somehow, if I take hold of these delicious moments, I am most aware of God’s presence.

When I do not spend time alone with God, I am less likely to recognize Him in the loudness of life. And I’ve come to realize that I usually I don’t really hear Him until I am totally out of the zone. In the silence, I am aware I have wandered from His presence.

Why is it that I can’t hear Him? My negligence of time spent daily discounts my awareness of His presence. Because when the volume of life and circumstance is on full throttle, crisis is usually the only call that leads me, broken at His feet again.

Still, I am grateful that He is always there—waiting.

Oswald Chambers said God is “always speaking,” but whether we hear him or not depends if we are aware that we are in his presence. He related this to the call of Isaiah, where God said “whom shall we send, who will go for us, and Isaiah replied, ‘here am I send me.’ ” Isaiah was in the presence of God, and he overheard the call.

How often have I missed out on overhearing the call of God because I have not consciously been in his presence? This got me thinking about being in the zone to hear God. What does that look like? You know, it is a funny thing about hearing God, sometimes I feel like I hear him loud and clear in my spirit, and I know exactly what I am supposed to be doing, and then all of a sudden, I sense the dead air on the other end—“God are you there? Can you hear me now?”

Ceiling praying, as I call it. I am praying, and it is just hitting the ceiling, and bouncing back. At least, that’s how it feels to me sometimes.

But the more I reflect upon what led up to that ceiling prayer, I usually find it’s a disconnect on my line, not God’s. I have missed my morning prayer, or I get so caught up in the academia of it all, I no longer have a grasp on relationship.

Am I in the right zone to hear God? He is always speaking to me, whether I hear Him or not depends on my state of being and the fullness of my perception.

What does it take to be in the “hearing zone” of God? Basically what any good relationship needs—communication. Some people struggle to find God’s will, to hear His voice, yet do not invest the time in relationship. This happens when I spend time reading and thinking about His word, talking to Him in prayer, hanging out with His friends. All these things help to put me in the right zone to hear God’s call.

One of the best ways to do that is to develop a daily practice of spending a set amount of time with God. Uninterrupted. Completely attentive. By spending this disciplined time daily, I get into the practice of expecting God to speak. It feels strange at first.

But then again, all relationships are a bit strange in the beginning.

With time, there is an intimacy that is formed. God honors my time investment by making Himself known in a way that is unmistakable.

God Calling…can you hear me now? S&L