Words With God: A 5-Day Reading Plan From Addison BevereSample

Hearing the Voice

Have you ever been alone in a great canyon? One of those caverns that traps sound waves, making them skip across surfaces and travel back to you? The reverberations are fun to manipulate, at least for a while, but eventually it gets old listening to yourself on repeat. Conversations, by definition, are supposed to involve two or more people, so it’s only natural for us to want someone else to get involved.

For many of us, though, praying to God feels like yelling within a great canyon. Sometimes it may seem like someone’s joining the conversation, but how can we be sure that other voice isn’t just an echo of our own thoughts, words, desires? How can we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’re not just having words with ourselves?

The thrilling and terrifying reality is that it’s in the quietness of the canyon that we unlearn the voice of the accuser and learn to hear the Voice of our Father. Like a child sent into the wilderness for a rite of passage, so our journey with prayer takes us into and through the silence.

It’s in the canyon that we wrestle with God and discover who we are and what we’re capable of. It’s in the canyon where empty words are exchanged for a real connection. It’s in the canyon that we face off with our ideas of God, prayer, and many other things, so we can surrender to the mind of Christ.

It’s in the canyon that we figure out that a “prayer life” is much more than a spiritual exercise; it’s the higher consciousness that reorders and integrates life, reclaiming every bit of living (and us) as holy and necessary to God’s purposes and design.

The canyon’s silence helps us join our voice—our holy amen—with the Voice.

For even in the canyon’s echo, the Voice speaks.