Enter Quietly

I wanted to share a revelatory experiance i had. Many times when I'm going to the Lord in bedtime prayer, i will take a deep breath and try to clear my head. I try to be as still and quiet as i can, try to not think, but only listen. Try that... its not as easy as it sounds.

The idea is,..i want to come into His presence humbly and reverant,...able to listen first,..then speak. in the culture we live in those principles are being lost, ...in Job 32 this cat Elihu speaks up to confront Job, after that he waited forever til the other three "comforters" were finished yammering because he said, they're older than me. This generation of ours is disrespectul,..irreverant and without dignity and class.

How much more insulant is it, when we blunder into the throneroom of the almighty God with ritualistic prayers and sanctimonious shopping lists, not stopping to see if just maybe He wants to speak first. in Esther , she had to touch the outstretched sceptor of the king in order to approach Him , risking her life going there without being summoned. And we see soloman saying "watch your step when you go to God's house, ..mind your manners,..be more ready to hear, than to blurt out foolish things....God is in heaven , you are on earth, therefor let your words be few." Ecles 5:1-2

The guy in luke 18:13 smote his breast and wouldnt even raise his eyes to heaven, saying Lord be merciful to me a sinner.
Besides wanting to be respectful in His presence, i also wanted to be quiet enough to hear Him, and until recently i was always hoping that if i had the right attitude, and was quiet enough i might hear a small voice especially from Him to me, . Elijah thought at first God should speak to him in a dramatic fashion 1 kings 19:11-12 then He learned to "be still and know He is God" psalm 46:10 . I became frustrated when i never seemed to hear it. maybe i did,..but didnt recognise it,..as samuel didnt at first. i figured ,.."Lord,..why not just once in a while give a small nod, a token, a confirmation?", or like tongues when they bear witness to His Spirit with groanings that can't be uttered, a connection. i always felt like, "shouldnt prayer be a "two-way" thing really?"...i hate feeling like all i'm doing is submitting the requisition form and making flowery orations, then saying amen and on my way i go. and i would ask,.."Lord how come if you stood by paul in the night and spoke to Abraham and mary and others, why not with us today?"
then one day the light came on.

It occured to me that whatever thing the Lord might possibly say to me in a prayer, will only be a reitteration of what He's already layed out for us in His word. His word is alive. It's the complete and ultimate source for everything God wants us to know and hear from Him, and through the Holy Spirit's guidance as we read it, He speaks to us through it. God speaks in extrabiblical ways yes,...in our prayers, dreams, visions, thoughts, and things other say to us,...yet all of them will and must be totally in line with the written word, and ulitmately will only be the same principles and wisdom found in scripture , couched in diferrent ways.

God doesn't oppose Himself, so if we have His complete and final word, what reason is there really to reveal things to us privately in redundance, accept as reminders and encouragements.
There needs to be a final authoritative and perfect standard, which is what the bible is. otherwise, if each one of has Our own little "God voices", then how would you know, even among closeknit souls, if a brother isn't misunderstanding, hearing incorrectly, misinterperating, skewing to his own bias, or even deliberately lying, distorting, fabricating, embellishing on, or falsifying what he's claiming God said to him. we have to have a central, standardised way for all of us to get the same message.


The apostles were blessed to have had more personal encounters with the Lord after He assended , but they did not yet have the bible as we know it. I wonder sometimes if they had any hint of how their writings were to eventually be bound together with the scrolls they knew, and become a final and complete set of God's words for man on earth for the rest of time. I'm gussing no, because imagine THAT kind of performance anxioty!..