Listening for Earthquakes

Grass prickled into my back. Stars shone stark and bright above. The air smelled of wood fire, and it skittered chill across my arms. That fall night, my chest ached with a hollow the size of the unfriendly universe, made all the worse because it couldn't evidence itself externally, except for the tears on my cheeks.

"God." Just the one word, so futile. I tried again. "God. Please. Where are you? Speak to me. Why can't I see you? Why can't I hear you?"

He spoke to His servants in the Bible, certainly. Why not to me, if He was real?

But I heard nothing. No audible words. Only a quiet thought, a Bible verse I had often meditated on in recent months:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Col. 1:16-17)

My eyes caught sight of a branch extending from a nearby tree. Why should there be a tree branch? Why anything at all instead of scattered particles and chaos? There He was, my Lord Jesus, right there — holding that branch together — literally, making it "consist." Holding me together. I couldn't see God because He is a spirit, but I could see the result of His existence.

Later, as I was recording that moment in my journal, I realized something else. God had spoken to me. I would not have remembered that verse or understood its meaning if not for the Holy Spirit living in me. God was telling me, "You don't need me to thunder from Heaven. I wrote down all the words you will need long before you were born, in my Scripture."

Not only had God shown me Himself and spoken to me personally, He had answered my prayer the instant I had finished speaking. Expecting one manifestation of God, I had received another, gaining just the slightest flavor of my Lord as He truly is.

God Exists

Ever since this moment when God touched me, I haven't doubted His existence. And so I learned something about power in prayer: "for he that cometh to God must believe that he [exists], and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." (Heb. 11:6)

That second half of this verse is often a little harder to believe, however. I, for one, have grown weary in prayer on several occasions. How diligently must I seek God, and what kind of reward is He promising, anyway? I think the answer to the second half of that verse links into the first. It isn't enough to know some kind of God exists. As a distinct personality, He wants me to know Him as He is, not as I imagine Him to be.

In one of my favorite Bible stories, shortly after a great victory over the priests of Baal, the prophet Elijah flees from Jezebel and hides fearfully in a cave. The Lord asks him what he is doing there, and Elijah relates his woes. How does Yahweh reply?

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (I Kings 19:11-12)

God exists, and He manifests Himself as He chooses. If I am listening for an earthquake when I pray, I might mistake His voice. I need to seek His face in the written Word and learn who He is and how He wants me to come to Him.

God Rewards

I've noticed that small children put out a particular whiny, obnoxious noise when they want something, but they don't wish to ask for it. In my house growing up, we often heard it when one of us wanted something down from a high shelf. My father never let us get away with that. In his wisdom, he would simply wait. And then he would say, "You're not using all your height." When at last we asked, he would fetch what we wanted.

Similarly, God waits for us to "diligently seek Him" before he rewards us. He wants us to come to Him like children, recognizing our proper place of humility. As Catherine Marshall, author of Christy, writes in her devotional book Adventures in Prayer, "Admittance to the School of Prayer is by an entrance test with only two questions. The first one is: Are you in real need? The second is: Do you admit that you are helpless to handle that need?"

Also, when asking, it is easy to forget that God is a Person and not a vending machine. He is not obligated to give us what we want, and He is certainly not obligated to give it to us now. In fact, the more furiously we demand our right to a petition now, the more we demonstrate our incapacity to appreciate God and His judgment. As James writes, "Ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:3-4).

After I took some university courses and wasn't getting any closer to doing what I wanted, for example, I really, really wanted a career in law. I looked in to it, pursued it with relish and decided I needed to start taking the course NOW. I don't remember now what was so urgent; perhaps it was because I was working a minimum wage job. At any rate, I had no money for the course, and I made myself miserable.

God taught me many lessons that year, and by the end of the year I had grown reconciled to my lack of funds. Incidentally, at the very time I grew more content, I found that I could actually afford to take out a loan and pay it off after the course was done. I took out the loan and registered for the course!

God is a Rewarder

I could stop there, with the immediate answer to prayer, except the form the answer took is illustrative. I had the loan, I could pay for the course. Once I started the course I still had to pay my bills and other regular living expenses. Since I was working part time, any money that I made was spent on day to day life and I therefore couldn't save any of it up to help pay off the debt once I was done school. Moreover, after the course was done and I started my job in a law firm, the pay was actually terrible!

Every day, then, became an adventure in prayer. If I paid my regular bills and the high amount that I had set to pay off my debt, I had nothing left. I often wondered if I would be able to pay my bills each month, but as soon as I remembered to pray, my money submitted innocently. Eventually, I learned. I started with prayer, rather than resorting to it. And my account behaved like a lamb, albeit a lame one with a few hiccups.

To bring this illustration home, like many other singles, I frequently pray for a spouse. As I pray for this spouse, I remember my desire to work in a law firm. I loved my job, as I expect to love my spouse (obviously on a different level!), but boy oh boy was that course and job flawed! Oddly enough, I loved my course and job even more for the flaws. Nobody else had taken that course with that group of people or had that job with those co-workers.

Most importantly, taking that course and getting that job did not end my prayers, but increased them. God wanted His presence known in both the asking and the receiving. He gave me a job just when I needed one, but much more than that, He called me to grow closer to Him. Just like the tree branch I had seen in the park, that course and job deepened my understanding of God's power and presence.

I notice, then, that the verse from Hebrews does not focus on the reward itself, but on the One who gives it, the "Rewarder." God doesn't give me a gift so that I can play with it apart from Him, but so that I can bask in His presence ever more. He wants us all to share in the very essence of His soul — His love, peace, patience, faith, hope, and righteousness. And so through a lifetime, we begin to grasp that a relationship with the Rewarder is, in fact, the greatest present of all.