I Kings 19:12

A woman who had made rapid progress in her understanding of the Lord was once asked the secret of her seemingly easy growth. Her brief response was, “Mind the checks.”

The reason many of us do not know and understand God better is that we do not heed His gentle “checks”—His delicate restraints and constraints. His voice is “a gentle whisper.” A whisper can hardly be heard, so it must be felt as a faint and steady pressure upon the heart and mind, like the touch of a morning breeze calmly moving across the soul. And when it is heeded, it quietly grows clearer in the inner ear of the heart.

Some twenty years ago a friend gave me a book entitled True Peace . It had an old medieval message and this one primary thought—tha t God was waiting in the depths of my being to speak to me if I would only be still enough to hear His voice.

I assumed this would not be a difficult thing to do, so I tried to be still. No soon er had I begun to do so than complete pandemonium seemed to break loose. Suddenly I heard a thousand voices and sounds from without and within, until I could hear nothing except these incredible noises. Some were my own words, my own questions, and even my own prayers, while others were temptations of the Enemy , and the voices of the world’ s turmoil.

Inner stillness is an absolute necessity to truly knowing God. I remember learning this during a time of great crisis in my life. My entire being seemed to throb with anxiety, and the sense of need for immediate and powerful action was overwhelming. Yet the circumstances were such that I could do nothing, and the person who could have helped would not move.

For a time it seemed as if I would fall to pieces due to my inner turmoil. Then suddenly “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12 KJV) whispered in the depths of my soul, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The words were spoken with power and I obeyed. I composed myself, bringing my body to complete stillness, and forced my troubled spirit into quietness. Only then, while looking up and waiting, did I know that it was God who had spoken. He was in the midst of my crisis and my helplessness, and I rested in Him.

When a man loses heart, he loses everything. To keep one’s heart in the midst of life’s stream and to maintain an undiscourageable front in the face of its difficulties is not an achievement that springs from anything that a laboratory can demonstrate or that logic can affirm. It is an achievement of faith.

If you lose your sky, you will soon lose your earth.

Is there any note in all the music of the world as mighty as the grand pause? Is there any word in the Psalms more eloquent than the word “Selah,” meaning pause? Is there anything more thrilling and awe-inspiring than the calm before the crashing of the storm, or the strange quiet that seems to fall upon nature before some supernatural phenomenon or disastrous upheaval? And is there anything that can touch our hearts like the power of stillness?

For the hearts that will cease focusing on themselves, there is “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7); “quietness and trust” (Isaiah 30:15), which is the source of all strength; a “great peace” that will never “make them stumble” (Psalm 119:165); and a deep rest, which the world can never give nor take away. Deep within the center of the soul is a chamber of peace where God lives and where, if we will enter it and quiet all the other sounds, we can hear His “gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12).