From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.

~Deuteronomy 4:36~

Sometimes I get scared.  Sometimes, I’ll just be sitting around and I feel like I can’t hear Him…and it scares me more than anything else has ever scared me.  What if He’s stopped talking to me?  What if He didn’t like that last thing I said or did?  Will He finally turn away from me and say, “You’re on your own, kid?”  My fears are unwarranted, though.  He will never leave me or forsake me.  Though I know this with every fiber of my being, the fear still manages to find its way into my head at times when I feel like I’m all alone.  Such are the fears of a “baby” Christian.  I’m hoping that once I’ve “grown up” in the Word, these fears will subside. 

It’s not like the fear you feel when you are in the midst of an attack.  He knows that I have been through my fair share of attacks, both verbal and physical.  It isn’t even like the fear you feel when you experience a loss in your life.  The fear of losing your connection to God is so all-encompassing that it can really knock you off-balance.  Imagine, losing Him.  I can bear many things, but losing God is not one of those.  For the past few weeks, I’ve been really struggling to hear Him.  I know He’s been speaking.  I’ve had things come up that were definitely His voice in my life.  People I’ve talked to, places I’ve ended up visiting, and things I’ve read or heard on the radio or television have all confirmed His word in my life.  But there have been some times when I was so overwhelmed by the other voices I was hearing that I couldn’t tell whether or not what I was hearing was truly coming from Him.

I’d like to clarify that I am not hearing voices.  Just in case you were worried.  What I am talking about is when God speaks something into your heart and you just know that it was Him.  It’s not like you’re hearing and actual voice, it’s more like you get a strong feeling that you need to say or do something and you know it isn’t coming from your own ego or some other tape that plays in your head.  When you know what you have on your mind is not just some dumb idea you came up with; that it has something more to it than just surface appeal.  When you start hearing this sort of thing, it’s unnerving when suddenly it just isn’t there.  I think He does this when He thinks we are at a significant place in our walk with Him.  He kind of steps back and lets us see how things work when we follow His advice and of course, when we don’t. 

It’s not a punishment, it’s a test.  Or at least that’s how I see it.  He gets us through some things and shows us quite a bit and then He turns us loose in hopes that we were listening when He was talking.  We shouldn’t be afraid during these times, though it’s easier said than done.  We should trust that He’s prepared us for whatever we are facing and that He will be there for whatever He hasn’t yet equipped us to endure.  He trusts us to figure it out.  And the more I think about that, the less afraid I become.  If He trusts us, then He must know that we can succeed.  If He trusts us, then He must know that we are capable.  He has given us the ability to screw up, but He always knows the extent to which we will, if we do at all.  What a boost that should give us!  To be trusted by the One who is above all things.  To be trusted by such a powerful God.  To know that He has confidence in us that we often do not have and that He’s ready to catch us if we should fall.  What an awesome God we serve! 

Of David. The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?

~Psalm 27:1~

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