Do you ever have times when you’re just not at all hungry? In fact you’re so not hungry the mere thought of food, either preparation or contemplating consuming, makes you nauseous? I was there yesterday. I went 17 hours being so not hungry I didn’t eat.
I know. I know. Not the best thing to do. But honestly. I wasn’t sick. I just wasn’t hungry. I ate a peanut butter burrito around 4 and wasn’t hungry again until about 11 this morning.
This morning in Bible study we touched briefly on the need for us to sit in silence, in the quiet and wait expectantly for God to answer. We talked about how we live in a microwave society, we want it now, actually now isn’t soon enough we want it last week. We also live in a very noisy society. The traffic is noisy. The animals are noisy. Inside our homes it is noisy with either the radio, cds, telephones or the television.
We’ve forgotten how to be quiet. Quiet is unnerving for us. It scares us. Because when it’s quiet we have time to think and ponder and often we don’t like what comes to mind.
We claim on the one hand to want to hear God speak to our souls. To show us His will and His way. But we’re afraid He’ll tell us something we don’t want to hear or do. So we try desperately to drown out His still small voice.
But you know what? C.S. Lewis said it best when he said, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf  world.” Hmmm…ever wonder why we’re so often in pain? Maybe it is because God has tried the still, small approach and found us unreachable.
It isn’t that God doesn’t know when we’re listening. He knows everything. It isn’t that He doesn’t know what it will take. I think it is more God wanting us to listen to Him because we love Him and want to obey Him no matter what He asks us to do.
For the times though that we don’t respond that way, He can and does use any means possible.
I am not saying if we will just cultivate a time of quietness, of solitude with God that we will have no more pain. Not at all. But the more we learn to cultivate those virtues the more we will trust the loving hand, the more we will know the heart of our great God.
One of my favorite verses has to be Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” I recently received a copy of the Common English Bible and I love the way this verse reads, “That’s enough! Now know that I am God!”
What are some ways you are developing a quietness with God?
virginiagarrett.com 
That’s exactly why I’m enjoying learning how to do Lent. It’s one way to focus specifically on something and take away the microwave-aspect of life.
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Good job!!!
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When I was 14-16ish, I would go for days without being hungry and eating very little and that would alternate with days of being starving and eating everything I could get my hands on. 🙂 I still have some days where I’m just not hungry…sure makes cooking a pain. 🙂
I’ve been trying to develop a quiet time by reading the Bible while I eat breakfast before leaving for school. Gives me a whole different perspective on the day ahead. 🙂
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I am usually so busy talking over the din of the world that I don’t recognize how loud I am. I love people, so it is usually with others, but I also talk to myself, I talk to the walls, I talk to God. All without doing much listening.
A couple of years ago, I had cancer surgery that required a temporary tracheotomy. For five weeks I was silenced. When my voice was stilled and I wasn’t busy forming the next witty remark or rehearsing conversations, the voice of the Lover of my wounded soul became my focus. Gently, quietly, as is His way, God’s was my constant companion, my comforter, my joy in the midst of pain and sadness.
Our intimate relationship continues today as I carve out time each day with the Bible in my lap, letting it fall open to what God chooses for me. In those moments, I picture myself at the feet of Jesus, my head in His lap as He reads to me. It is then His voice that I hear rather than mine.
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