Listening Servant
A woman named Mary Geegh lives in my town. Now in her nineties, she is bedridden in a nursing home. She wrote a wonderful little book called God Guides, telling of her experiences of hearing God's voice during her long career as a missionary in India. I've read it many times. Her method, if one can call it that, was simple. When she needed to hear from the Lord about something—which was about every day—she would sit down with a pad and pencil, ask the Lord for his wisdom in the situation, listen quietly until he spoke, write down what she heard, and then do it. Just like that. If she didn't hear anything, she wouldn't do anything. Once when she was at odds with a fellow missionary and stumped over what to do to heal the breech, she listened for God's wisdom and heard the Spirit say, "Give her an egg." Perplexed, but obedient, she did what the Lord said to do, half apologizing to her colleague for what seemed to be a foolishly irrelevant act, given the tension between them. As it turned out, the gift of the egg had extraordinary significance for her alienated sister, since she needed exactly one more egg to feed her family that evening and had been wondering where she could find one. Mary's act of obedience to what some call "the inner voice" showed her sister not only that she truly desired reconciliation but that God did too, powerfully so. To read her book is to read of a woman who had this kind of thing happen over and over again. True, it's a little odd the way she would almost routinely hear the voice of God. Or should I say, uncommon? Most of us have not had her experience, but everyone I've known who has read of it has expressed a wistful longing to hear from God in the same simple and unaffected way. Prayer is a dialogue, ...
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