It was the Sound of God that I heard 8 years ago 1/13/2006. Never have I ever been more persuaded and convinced by a very Good God Who allowed some suffering in my life that has turned into way more good than I could have ever imagined. Look at where I am today. That Great Divide was the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, I literally thought it to be the worst. And I spiraled down into a depression that I never knew even existed. And my God showed up in my life like never before. When I told Beth Moore at a conference what had happened, she replied to me: Ezekiel 8:3. God has yanked you by the head of your hair and lifted you up. Go. And everywhere I turned, people would share with me Jonah 2:8. I'd turn the radio on and they would be talking about it. I'd go to church and it would be in the sermon: do not miss the Grace of God passing you by. Listen to the Sounds of God.
Keep listening for the Thunder of His Voice, Job. Job 37:3.
Job is listening but he doesn't hear---and he needs to ask himself why he is not hearing the Sound of God. We all need to ask ourselves today: do we hear the Sound of God in our lives? Elihu is about to hear That Thunder too.
"It is no surprise that the Bible uses hearing, not seeing, as the predominant image for the way human beings know God. They can't walk around God and take God in like a cathedral or an artichoke. They can only listen to time for the Sound of God---to the good times and bad times of their own lives for the words God is addressing to, of all people, them." (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words.)
And God speaks out of a whirlwind. To his child who lost 10 children. To his child who lost his health. To his child who lost his community. He sent a whirlwind not a spa. And God asks Job five dozen questions! "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge...Job 38:2; Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Have you ever commanded the sun to rise and the morning stars sang? What am I doing in this little life of mine? Do I live with the awareness of a very Present God holding all things together, even me. Do I live with expectations for God to show up in soft whispers to a broken world. Do I believe that the abundant life of John 10:10 holds expectations of my own thinking. This is A God Who shows up in a whirlwind to a hurting, broken son of God. Nothing soft about this. Help me to see the reality of what stirs in the Whirlwind of my own soul this very day. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear the Sound of your Voice from the Whispers to the Whirlwinds and all in-between.
After all of Job’s suffering, God decides to speak to him from a “whirlwind” not a whisper (Job 38:1). Often, Scripture uses this violent weather system as a metaphor for God’s wrath or destruction.
I am so quick to think that God is broadly brutally admonishing Job and destruction will be swift. Shame. Yet, God's speech reminds Job that God is the Creator who superintends all things. Everything is created, upheld, sustained, and restored by God. Rhetorical questions were used in the Hebrew culture by fathers leading their children to discipleship (Notes from Joel Muddamalle).
PHOTO: Stock photos. Free copyright. God speaks out of a whirlwind not a whisper.
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