For over a year, God has been silent. I have been seeking His wisdom on what my future will look like, what I should do for a living, where I can go to minister, and where I can actually make some money and there has been this gaping hole where it seemed that intimacy used to be.

And a little less than a year ago, instead of telling me what to do, God began taking away. He asked me to give up writing and blogging and it felt like watching everything I had worked for for years slip from my fingers.

I didn’t know if I would ever hold them again.

In the time since then I have struggled with insecurity and fear that I lack value. That I am not good enough. It feels silly and embarrassing to admit my desires and my perception of myself, but this is where I have been.

Life has seemed so plain. So blah. So not what I thought it would be.

So… ordinary.

Meanwhile it seems that many others are experiencing dreams come true. Friends build brand new houses and live on lakes and get book deals and I am here in my ordinary job, living ordinary days, with ordinary results.

Where is God in this ordinary life?

Well, as it turns out, He is everywhere.

Liz Ditty’s book, God’s Many Voices: Learning to Listen, Expectant to Hear released yesterday and I was given an advanced copy to review. I have had the opportunity to review several advanced copies over the past couple of years and never have I loved one as much as this.

From the beginning of the book, I felt like God was speaking something new to me. Answering questions I didn’t even realize I was asking.

More importantly, I heard him tell me, through Liz’s words, that He is always with me, actively seeking me, intentionally loving me.

Here are a few specific ways Liz’s words have encouraged me:

  1. When I read this book, I hear her voice. It is authentic and full of stories of her own experiences. She does not have a perfect, pulled together story to share, but one where God has met her in her greatest needs and proved himself to love her over and over again. I am encouraged that if he loves her that way, he loves me, too.
  2. “God’s silence is always for a purpose. Sometimes silence serves to bring us back to His presence when we’ve wandered, sometimes to allow us to grow, sometimes for us to rest in our faith, and sometimes to better enjoy the sweet embrace for a longed-for reconnection. Silence can develop our hunger for God’s voice… Even in the silence, God is with us.” (26, emphasis mine)  I needed to read those words. So I share them with you.
  3. I still have a purpose. “God’s will is more often about who we are than what we do… God calls us to relationship before He calls us to action.” (79) I have once again twisted up my worth and value in what I do more than who I am. I have forgotten who God has told me I am. His daughter. Beloved. Holy and whole. Liz helped me remember.
  4. God speaks through others. I think for years I thought that to hear from God through others was to be weak. That somehow if they are hearing from him and I am not, that is a judgment on me in some way. However, just this morning I remembered a dream a friend had about me over the weekend. We were rooming together for a women’s retreat and she woke up laughing that I had placed two massive pieces of ornately layered chocolate cake in her bare hands. I laughed and promptly forgot, but as I read God’s Many Voices God told me that her dream means I do give gifts to others. I am valuable and He is using me. I couldn’t have heard that if it weren’t for her dream.
  5. As I live my life washing dishes, doing endless laundry, cleaning up the house, and doing seemingly menial tasks, I am in fact serving alongside Jesus. “He was not too worthy to serve the ones God had given Him to care for. I was not a slave in this household; I was an embodiment of the love of Christ… God wanted me to have a dish in my hand when He whispered His invitation to serve. A radical bestowing of honor on my ordinary and daily routine, a deeper understanding of Jesus. My Jesus didn’t hang on to importance or comfort or privilege, but He came to serve in hard and humble ways.” (113)
  6. Liz shares many different ways to meet with God. Some are old, some may be new. But she even the classic practices of prayer and Bible reading with a fresh perspective and unique ideas that I hadn’t considered before. For example, you may have had prayer partners, but have you woken up in the early hours and called them to pray together once a week? Or read the entire Bible in 90 days with your friends? I am especially enticed by the spiritual friendships she has developed in her life. I think it is a deep longing I didn’t know I had.
  7. Even in my jealousy, God is working. I have just begun facing my envy of
    “jealousy reveals desire”
    friends and others who have what I want. According to Liz, “jealousy reveals desire… Like a good Father, God knew that my struggle with jealousy was an opportunity for me to see things about myself that He already knew.” (118-119) In her self-awareness, she began to experience greater rest. “God was inviting me to a new, truer identity and to greater security in Him.” (119)

There are so many gifts in this book. So many truths I am resting in and hearing again as if for the first time.

God’s Many Voices is going to be on my bookshelf for quite sometime as a resource and encouragement. Living this ordinary life can be full of trials and celebrations. It can be full of boredom and loneliness. It can be full of rejoicing and sadness.

God is speaking in all of life. He longs for us to hear Him and to be in relationship with Him.

Take heart, friend. Whether God is silent or speaking. Seems near or far. He can use any and all of it to make you into the person He created you to be.

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