Listening For One Voice

One of the things I remember about my high school basketball coach was a word he taught us about listening.  Anyone who remembers a high school gym during a basketball game knows it is a very loud place.  Unlike a football field where sounds can get lost in the vast spaces, sounds in a gym have nowhere to go but out and up and back and around.  The place can be shaking with all the hollering voices.  Our coach said we were to tune out every voice except his.  While we were on the court, the only voice to which we should be listening was his voice. 

 

I do not think Coach realized he was teaching us an important word about listening for the Voice of God in our prayers.  But, it is true.  To hear the Voice we long to hear means being intentional about tuning out the other noises and voices so that we are listening for only one voice.  It is not an easy thing for us to do because there is so much noise, so many voices, and so much confusion around us.  There are so many things that either demand our listening energy, or dulls it so that everything blends into one big smudge of a sound.

 

Even as this describes how it is in the world around us, so does it describe the world within us.  We may say along with Samuel, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening."  (I Samuel 3:9), but it is never quite that easy.  Entering into a still quietness where His Voice can be heard midst the idle chatter and unending noise sounding within our heart requires more than a word.  It requires effort and desire and a willingness to work at it and fail and work at it and fail until we finally learn how to enter into that place where the Voice can be heard.  Not only do we have to finally learn how to enter into that place of stillness, but we also have to learn to trust the Holy Spirit to take us into that place for we can never really arrive there alone.