I remember reading a portion of scripture where Jesus cried out—“‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear!’” (Matthew 13:9). His words hit me like a freight train. My eyes searched page upon page of scripture as the Holy Spirit illuminated this truth to me . Suddenly, I saw it. The word, “hear,” is the most important word in the entire Bible!

 

The most important treasures in the kingdom are predicated upon the necessity of hearing God. When the Lord gave me this truth, I wanted to underline every occurrence of this word in my Bible. This is the wellspring of eternal life; this is the fountainhead of kingdom power and authority; this is the source of wisdom, understanding, and life direction! 

 

I strongly advocate for a prayer life that is comprised mostly of silence. It’s a great delight to talk to God, but it’s even more thrilling when He talks to us. Things don’t change when I talk to God; things change when God talks to me. When I talk, nothing happens; when He talks, the universe comes into existence. The power of prayer is found, not in convincing God of my agenda, but in waiting upon Him to hear His agenda.

 

I do not mean to give the impression that hearing God’s voice is my daily experience in my secret place of prayer. Far from it! Most days I come way with unfulfilled longings, unrequited initiatives, unanswered prayers, unrealized aspirations, deferred hopes, and incomplete understandings.

 

But then along comes one of those days—you may know what I mean—when heaven leans over and God speaks a word directly to my heart. He breathes upon a portion of scripture and personalizes its meaning precisely to my felt need. Oh what glorious bliss! That moment is worth all of the knocking and seeking of the preceding days. I will endure months of silence if He will but speak one creative word from His mouth to my spirit.

 

I think about when God brought the people of Israel from Egypt, through the Red Sea, to Mount Sinai. There He appeared to the nation as a visible fire on the mountain and spoke. Their experience was so awesome it totally overpowered the Israelites. They asked Moses to go instead and speak to God by himself on their behalf. The psalmist described this scene with a most unusual phrase: “I answered you in the secret place of thunder” (Psalm 81:7). God viewed the convocation with His people on Mount Sinai as a “secret place” encounter with His people. He called them aside to a deserted mountain in order to speak with them and give them His commandments.

 

God has always designed that the secret place be a place where He answers us and speaks to us. Sometimes, He even apprehends us by thundering to us with His awesome voice. There is nothing more glorious than hearing His voice!

 

God has always longed to have the kind of intimate relationship with His people wherein they hear His voice and respond accordingly. I look at it this way: We close the door to our secret place so that we might shut out all distracting voices and tune our hearts to the one voice which we long to hear. “The secret place of thunder”—what an awesome description of the place where we come aside to hear the Lord.

 

My role, then, in the secret place of prayer is to listen for anything God might want to speak. If He doesn’t speak to me, my time spent in silent listening is not futile or in vain. I haven’t missed something or failed to connect. I realize I can’t tell God what to speak or when to speak it. But I can position myself in the secret place so that, when He chooses to speak, I am found listening. Hearing the voice of God is largely a matter of the will. We must choose to hear Him. We make the choice by setting aside time to listen quietly.

 

All of us want God to hear our prayers. But God said, “‘Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen’” (Zechariah 7:13). In other words, God said, “When I spoke, you didn’t listen to Me; therefore, when you speak, I won’t listen to you.” The inference is that when we hear God’s voice, He in turn listens to our voices.

 

Stop everything, come aside, listen, and wait on Him. Wait until He speaks. He longs to commune with you. Don’t worry about the thoughts that begin to bombard your mind as you wait on Him. Take a notepad and write down those “things to do” as they interrupt your listening. Then, you can put those thoughts out of mind and maintain your focus where you want it, knowing that you’ll not forget about those details later.

 

Be encouraged today by the fact that you’re not the only one who finds listening a very challenging discipline to master. The best attainments in God always come the hardest. Be prepared to make the discipline of attentive listening a lifetime pursuit that will become easier in the doing of it. Just listen in the secret place of thunder.

 

God loves our voices, He hears every word we speak, and it moves Him. But there are moments where, He longs to captivate our attention. If we would but quiet ourselves for one moment and listen... Ah! the joy in hearing Him speak. There is a time to speak and a time for silence. Talk to your Heavenly Father but then be silent and hear His thunder!

 

Adapted from Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge, Copyright © 2001