‘What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.’ – Matthew 10:27
It is in the quiet times that we must learn to listen. These times are what Matthew is referring to as ‘darkness’. These times are when God seems absent and we find ourselves overshadowed by unpleasant circumstance. Yet God is not absent. He is there all the time, if only we will stop and listen to what He is trying to tell us.
Oswald Chambers eloquently states that we are put in the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him, just as a song bird is taught to sing in the dark. What an wonderful analogy. God does not put us in the dark to cause suffering. God puts us in the dark so that we might grow and learn to sing when we are in the light. Remember that His call is constant. Those who heed it are merely those who heard it and responded.
When at last we step out of the darkness and into the light, having heard what it was that God was telling us, we do so with a sense of delight. How we could not be delighted to have recognized the voice of God speaking to our hearts seems impossible to me. Chambers cautions though that such delight should be tempered with humiliation. To be used as a tool for God’s works is certainly good for the ego, but to forget our destitution and inadequacy before Him is to stoke the selfish lie that Satan propagates through our tendency for self-righteousness.
It is in the quiet times that we must learn to listen. These times are what Matthew is referring to as ‘darkness’. These times are when God seems absent and we find ourselves overshadowed by unpleasant circumstance. Yet God is not absent. He is there all the time, if only we will stop and listen to what He is trying to tell us.
Oswald Chambers eloquently states that we are put in the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him, just as a song bird is taught to sing in the dark. What an wonderful analogy. God does not put us in the dark to cause suffering. God puts us in the dark so that we might grow and learn to sing when we are in the light. Remember that His call is constant. Those who heed it are merely those who heard it and responded.
When at last we step out of the darkness and into the light, having heard what it was that God was telling us, we do so with a sense of delight. How we could not be delighted to have recognized the voice of God speaking to our hearts seems impossible to me. Chambers cautions though that such delight should be tempered with humiliation. To be used as a tool for God’s works is certainly good for the ego, but to forget our destitution and inadequacy before Him is to stoke the selfish lie that Satan propagates through our tendency for self-righteousness.
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