Hearing a Voice in the Quiet of Night

As I'm sitting here this evening in the quiet after my family have all fallen asleep I think of going to bed myself. But I've also been thinking about my study on love all day. I haven't had the time I wanted to spend studying it... so I open my list of verses I compiled last week and look at Genesis 3. I don't know why I had this as a love chapter. So I pray a bit about it. I wait, nothing... so I move on to Exodus.

In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling. Exodus 15:13

I am thankful for God's unfailing love. And I think about it a while. I really just spend time considering how His love never fails me. My eyes are heavy after only five hours of sleep last night I decide to go to bed. But I can feel a pull in my heart.

Here alone in the silence I can feel God calling to me. I think to myself, maybe I should read my Bible for a while longer, maybe I should pray about this or that.

And then I think about how I have been told I am crazy for believing that I can hear God calling to me. How I have been told I am delusional because I believe I see things that are invisible. Maybe I am, but I don't really care anymore.

I know that He is speaking the same thing to me that He has been speaking for some time now. It is a whisper at first, “Relinquish control. Won't you just let me in?”

His words reverberate in my heart and I ache at the hearing of them. For I know my ways and I know how stubborn I am. Will I? I want to. Oh, how I want to trust the God of my salvation with every piece of me. So I say yes, even as my heart trembles at the thought of it.

What will it look like, my giving up my control? You see I've lived with God long enough to know that when He speaks to me, when I obey Him, my world gets flipped upside down.

So I know I won't be going to sleep any time soon. So I sit in the dark waiting to do or not do. Just waiting. And I hear words written in a book I have never read. I hear, “Hey, write it down.”

I think, “Write it down? Write what down?”

“All this, all these thoughts all these words washing about in your mind.”

Why would I want to do that? I guess it wouldn't hurt to write it down. But before I've got a word on the page, I can see where this is going. Not really wanting to write these things down... but.

I hear God again, “Relinquish control. Won't you just let me in?”

I ask, “God what does this have to do with love? How can me giving you control of these quiet moments in the night be attached to love?” Because, I want to change the subject. I don't want what I feel rushing in around about me to escape into this world. Because, I know He isn't telling me to write in a little composition book that hides under my bed. Because I can already see where this is headed...and I am not so sure I want to go there.

Here they are, words typed out onto the page. Words, no thoughts, spilling out into the world. Where they can be seen. And I sit here vulnerable.

My eyes ache at their breaking and I know something is going to follow.

Sadness follows. A great rush of sorrow deep within my core being begins to make itself felt. And I begin to see my life lessons of “love”.

Oh, this is what dying feels like. This is what trusting means. I don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to share my past, my pain. But I must say, “I will trust You with these things. I pull down my defenses and I relinquish control to You, God”.