A famous actor talks about the night he overheard his little daughter praying. He was surprised to hear her saying, “Dear God, now what can I do for you?” The actor was surprised, “How do you expect God to tell you what he wants?” asked the actor afterwards. “By listening quietly,” said the little girl.
“And I suppose he speaks to you in a booming voice?” joked the actor. “No,” said the little girl. “He speaks in whispers and gentle nudges. My job is to listen carefully. Sometimes He makes me look out of the window.” “What do you see there?” “I see our maid sobbing. So I just go down and put my hand round her. Sometimes he speaks through my books.” “Your books?” asked the surprised actor.
“He gives me a thought to follow. My job is to listen.” Said his daughter quietly. Here’s a story about how God speaks: Late one evening a professor sat at his desk working on the next day’s lectures. He began to throw them in the wastebasket when one magazine—not even addressed to him but delivered to his office my mistake—caught his attention. It fell open to an article titled “The Needs of the Congo Mission.”
The professor began reading it idly, but then he was consumed by these words: “The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one—one on whom, already, the Master’s eyes have been cast—that he or she shall be called to this place to help us.”
The professor closed the magazine and wrote in his diary: “My search is over.” He decided to go to Congo. The professor’s name was Albert Schweitzer. That little article, hidden in an old magazine was placed by accident in Schweitzer’s mailbox. By chance his housekeeper put the magazine on the professor’s desk. By chance he noticed the title, which seemed to leap out at him.
Dr. Schweitzer became one of the great figures this century in humanitarian work nearly unmatched in human history. What do you think? Was it chance? No. God. What Albert Schweitzer did was to start searching, then he kept his ears open to God’s voice.
It came through a magazine that was not even addressed to him! There are so many of us who wait for God to speak to us in booming tones, whereas his whispering in our ears goes unheard.
Listen for those whispers. It may come through a wrongly dialed number. It may come through a blind man trying to cross the road, or a cat up a tree. Just today change your prayer to, “Dear God what can I do for you?” then listen like crazy..!
