When God stops speaking to you.

When God stops speaking to you.

A few months ago, I read something that really grabbed hold of my heart. It was a simple idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it captured what I was feeling at the time. Here is what I read:

I got a hole in me now
I got a scar I can talk about

What felt powerful and true about this was the honesty. For close to two decades I had done everything I could to numb and ignore the hole in me. I had thrown so many different forms of medicine at it. I tried to stay in motion and be busy because if I ever paused, the hole had a chance to catch up with me.

And these two sentences express what it feels like to come to the end of running away. In the first, the author admits there is a hole inside. It is identified, there is a sense of dragging it into the light. And that’s what I feel like right now. I know it’s there. I’ve called it out and named it and it’s losing its power every day.

In the second sentence, the author confesses a scar he can talk about. That kind of reflects what I want this site to be about. Sharing scars and the lessons that blossom in our life when we roll up our sleeves with each other. Taken together, those sentences felt like a private message for me from God. They were a whisper of his plan for my life.

And, they were a Matchbox 20 lyric.

That’s probably a bit of a balloon prick revelation. I suppose if those two lines were taken from a dark poem by a German writer that would make me sound cool and hip. But instead, they’re a lyric from a Matchbox 20 song.

I think though, they reveal something deep and true about God. They remind us that God speaks in more ways than we can imagine.

I believe that in many ways, I have made God small and simple. He’s not as vanilla as I used to imagine him, but he’s still a fairly limited guy. He can speak to me through the Bible, ministers and really amazing sunsets, but a song? I don’t know.

The reality is though that God is the creator of creativity. He spoke to Moses through a burning bush, the Israelites through a talking donkey, Joseph through dreams. I don’t think he’s stopped talking necessarily, I just think we’ve stopped listening. We’ve stopped looking. We’ve stopped expecting to find God in the unexpected places.

The result is he’s gone mute. He’s gone quiet and we are alone again, trying to stay a few steps ahead of that hole inside, trying to wear sleeves big enough to hide our scars.

But God is talking. Today he is whispering and shouting and sending you lyrics and sunsets and little kids and birds and dreams and encouragement in a million different ways.

Don’t make him small.
Look for him on days other than Sunday.
Just listen.

p.s. what’s the weirdest way God has spoken to you?