“And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice” (I Kings 19:12).

Two men were walking along a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly, one of them stopped and said, “Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket.” They both stood in the same spot, but the other man could not seem to hear it.

He asked his friend how he could hear the cricket amid the roar of the traffic and the sound of all the people. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature.

He did not explain to his friend in words how he could hear the sound of the cricket, but instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a half-dollar coin, dropped it onto the sidewalk, and watched intently as a dozen people began to look for the coin as they heard it clanking around despite the sounds of the traffic and noisy city life. He turned to his friend and said, “We hear what we listen for.”

God is a speaking God. When our world was without form and void, He spoke things into existence. When He created Adam and Eve, He walked with them and spoke to them. When they sinned against Him, He made a way to restore conversation and relationship with humanity. He gave us the law through Moses. He designed a tabernacle that He may dwell among His people. He had chosen judges and prophets to speak through them. Our conscience, the glory of His creation, anointed men and women of God. – all these are just a few of the numerous ways through which God speaks to His people.

God does not only listen to our cry, but He also desires to speak to us. He wants to talk because His voice and His Word are powerful enough to give us hope, joy, peace, direction, and provision. When He speaks, everything changes. Nature evolves in pursuit of what He says. Things in heaven, things on earth, and things under the earth follow the sound of His voice. If all universe came into existence because of a single word from Him, what do you think will happen in our situation when He speaks even through His still small voice?

Many people think that God ceased to talk to people. They seem to be longing for the voice of God but never hear Him. The issue is not whether God speaks or not; the question is, “Are we listening?”

Because of all the voices that are in our world, the voice of God gets crowded out. Moreover, if we don’t tune out the noise coming from this world, we can never hear His voice. It is not God’s way to compete with the other voices in our life. He does not usually turn His volume up just to crowd out the other voices that we are allowing to speak to us. He could send fire or an earthquake like what He did to Elijah, but His way is often to speak through a still small voice.

Are we in a situation where God needs to shout just for Him to get our attention? Are we too far from Him that He needs to make a noise to speak to us? Are we in the place where we need to be?

“Where art thou?” He asked Adam.

“I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid,” he responded.

God asked the question not because He didn’t know where Adam was. He is Omniscient – He knows everything. However, the question was for Him to reveal what was wrong: Adam wasn’t in the place where he needed to be. And because he wasn’t where God wanted him to be, he couldn’t properly respond to the voice he heard.

I challenge this generation of young people to get close to God. Get as close as possible to His presence. Let’s be in the places we need to be so we can hear Him properly and listen to His still small voice.