I know at least twenty different versions of my husband’s smile.
There is the genuine one. The polite one. The I’m ready to leave this party one. The this person is starting to annoy me one. After twelve years together, sometimes all it takes is one look across a crowded room and I know exactly what he is thinking.
Sometimes, strangely, we’ll discover that we’ve been having exactly the same random thought without having said a word to each other.
I know him.
Not because I studied him. Not because I memorized a list of his behaviors. I know him because I have spent twelve years of my life with him.
And it made me wonder:
How can we expect to recognize God’s voice if we barely spend time with Him?
You start to think like the people around you
I was recently promoted to Chief of Staff, which means I now spend a significant amount of time with our CEO.
Something interesting has started happening.
When someone sends me a presentation to review before it gets to him, I can increasingly anticipate his reaction.
He’ll question this slide.
He’ll want evidence for that.
This isn’t going to land.
I don’t have to ask him every time. I’ve simply spent enough time watching how he thinks, what he notices, what questions he asks and what matters to him.
This happens with the people closest to us.
Spend enough time with someone and you learn their rhythms. Their reactions become familiar. Sometimes you even start picking up their language and habits.
Proximity changes you.
So why would our relationship with God be any different?
This started with a verse on a plane
I’m writing this on a plane.
I opened my Bible app today and the featured verse was John 13:34:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
John 13:34, NIV
The app had paired the verse with someone else’s personal reflection. The final line said that as we learn to love as Jesus loved, we become more like Him.
Something about becoming more like Him stopped me.
Because how do we become like anybody?
We spend time with them.
We watch them. Listen to them. Learn what matters to them. Eventually, we know them well enough that we can anticipate what they might say or do.
And that made me confront something I haven’t particularly wanted to confront lately.
I haven’t been spending enough time with God.
I know what it feels like when I do
I’ve used the phrase “hearing God” before, and I know not everybody believes in that. That’s okay.
I know what I have experienced.
There have been countless moments in my life when I have taken something to God—a problem, a decision, something I genuinely did not know how to solve—and afterward, a thought has emerged with unusual clarity.
Do this.
And I do.
Often, it turns out to be exactly the direction I needed.
Five years ago, I received two significant job offers at the same time. They represented two completely different paths: one with a software vendor and another with a services company.
I talked to people. I analyzed both options. I went backwards and forwards.
I was conflicted.
Then I slept on it.
The next morning, I knew.
Five years later, I can see just how consequential that decision was. That one choice took me from one room to another, then another, and eventually into rooms I could never have imagined myself sitting in at the time.
I cannot prove to another person what happened in my mind that morning.
But I know.
And I’ve experienced versions of it too many times to dismiss it.
But lately, it has been quieter
Here is the uncomfortable part.
There are also seasons when I ask and the clarity doesn’t come as easily.
And I’ve started noticing something about those seasons.
Often, I haven’t really been spending time with God.
That is where I am right now.
Work has consumed too much of me. If I’m being truthful, I have allowed it to occupy a place it was never supposed to occupy.
I made it my god.
I worked, came home exhausted, watched television because I had nothing left, slept badly, woke up and did it again.
My normal rhythms started disappearing.
Bible reading.
Prayer.
Journaling.
The gym.
Books.
Sleep.
One by one, the things that kept me grounded were crowded out by the thing I had decided was most urgent.
Eventually my body caught up with the choices I was making. I was exhausted. Burnt out. My husband and I are traveling through Canada right now partly because I knew I needed to get away.
And then, on a plane in the middle of that break, I opened my Bible.
Become more like Him.
Maybe this was the reading I needed.
Maybe God isn’t silent. Maybe we’ve become unfamiliar with His voice.
I want to be careful here.
I don’t believe every difficult decision has an immediate answer waiting on the other side of a prayer.
I’ve been through situations where I prayed and still didn’t understand what God was doing.
Sometimes it took six months.
Sometimes years.
Only much later could I look backwards and understand what that season had taught me and how God had brought me through it.
Spending time with God doesn’t mean He hands you the solution to every problem.
It means you become increasingly familiar with the One helping you navigate it.
There is a difference.
My husband doesn’t have to explain every facial expression to me because twelve years of proximity have taught me how to read them.
I can anticipate questions from my CEO because I spend enough time listening to how he thinks.
So perhaps when God’s voice feels distant, one question worth asking is not simply:
Why aren’t You speaking?
But:
How much time have I actually spent listening?
Prayer is not telling God what you want
This is another lesson I keep having to relearn.
Sometimes we think we’re praying when we’re really just presenting God with our preferred outcome.
Here’s the problem.
Here’s what I want.
Please make it happen.
Amen.
But surrender is different.
Surrender says:
Here is what I want, God. Here is what I’m afraid of. Here is what I don’t understand. But what do You want me to do?
Then comes the part I think we sometimes skip.
Listening.
Prayer is not only about what you want God to do.
It is also about becoming quiet enough to understand what He might want from you.
So I am going back to my quiet corner
I already know the rhythm that works for me.
Find somewhere quiet where nobody can see me.
Put on worship music.
Read a chapter of the Bible.
Close my eyes and sit with it.
Ask: What is this telling me?
Then open my journal and write.
Sometimes I know exactly what to write.
Sometimes the thought emerges halfway through the page.
Sometimes nothing becomes clear at all, and the journal simply becomes a written prayer filled with my questions, fears and asks.
That’s okay too.
The point isn’t to manufacture an answer.
The point is to spend time with Him.
Morning and evening.
Before work gets me. Before the inbox gets me. Before everybody else’s voice gets a chance to become louder than His.
And again at night, when the day has finished making its arguments about what matters.
Maybe you’re facing a decision right now and don’t know what to do.
Maybe something in your life makes no sense.
Maybe you’ve been asking God for direction and wondering why everything feels unusually quiet.
I won’t tell you that more prayer will magically solve it.
But perhaps there is a more uncomfortable question worth asking:
When was the last time you really spent time with Him?
Not asking for something.
Not rushing through a verse.
Not squeezing Him between two things you’ve decided are more important.
Just being with Him.
Because the people we spend our lives with eventually become familiar to us. We recognize their voice. We understand their character. We begin to know what matters to them.
And, little by little, we become more like them.
Perhaps that is the invitation for me today.
And maybe for you too.
Spend enough time with Him that His voice becomes familiar again.
Leave a Reply