Enter In (if You Can)

It was my intention this particular morning to begin writing a blog post about why we name our candles the way we do. I was going to begin by telling you about the story of the first candle we named, which is called Enter In. There was a tree branch that arched over my path as I walked that morning, now more than two years ago. It looked to me like an archway to a path that invited me to enter into it. Then in my spirit I heard that voice that I know to be God, say, “enter into My presence.” Then God just started showing me how He wanted the glory for what we were doing with the candles and that no matter what we do with our business it always must point the way to Him. Thus, the naming and the story and scripture that goes along with it.

On this particular morning as I was thinking about this blog post about “Enter In”, I started asking for God’s guidance with my words and what did He want? His answer was direct but interesting and here’s what happened.

In order to enter into the presence of God it requires us to still our minds, to focus on Him and allow Him to speak to us through the many ways He chooses to do that. Sometimes it’s internally and sometimes through the word and sometimes it’s by what’s going on around us.

As I’m listening for God’s voice I begin hearing the robins and the phoebes and all the other songbirds signing their beautiful songs. I’m thanking the Lord for speaking to me through His creation when all of a sudden there is a blue jay, alerting the forest of some impending danger that we all need to know about. Then after the blue jay, I began hearing what I thought was two trains. Sometimes we have trains pass at the back of our property, one waits while the other passes by. This day it seemed like they were both moving as I could hear them honking their horns at both of the crossings not too far from our property. I thought the horns sounded odd and they kept doing it incessantly for some reason.

I’m beginning to have to strain to hear the small birds sing as the train horns drown them out. As I’m walking away from the tracks and getting closer to the road the runs by us, I begin hearing the noise from the road as well as the trains, so it’s getting so noisy I can barely hear anything else! Also, we happen to have neighbors that own a dog kennel and it was just about the time I was nearing their property line that the dogs were let out and of course all their barking just added to the noise of everything else going on around me.

This whole analogy wasn’t lost on me. I saw what God why trying to tell me. It’s those times when the world is blowing up around us that we truly need to press in to be able to hear from Him. How can we enter into His presence when the world is so loudly trying to get our attention? Does He speak to us through the noise? How can we clearly hear him if we are so distracted by what is going on around us?

God speaks to us in a still, small voice because He wants our undivided, undistracted, full focus and attention completely on Him. He requires us to quiet ourselves in order to hear from Him, it’s what He wants us to do. So, it might take time, effort, and sacrifice.

As sure as those trains eventually pass, and it becomes quiet again around me, so it is with the noise of our life and whatever circumstances we’re going through, will also pass, we just have to hang on and press in to hear the voice of God.

Now, I wish I could say that this was the end of my story but when God wants to make a point, He makes it! As it turned out, it wasn’t trains on the tracks after all. As made my way to the back of the property for my second time, I was hearing more and more noise and wondered what in the world is going on? Then I realized it was not trains, but railway work vehicles of every kind and sort you could imagine. I’m assuming that some track work is going to take place somewhere west of us as I can’t even begin to tell you how many track vehicles there were! I’m out walking for an hour or so each morning and the noise continued for the better part of my walk. It seemed endless, there was one after another, and just when I thought it was over, a new bunch would run through. Kind of like the trials in our life can be sometimes. Just when you thought everything was quietening down something else comes up that requires your attention.

Even after they had all come through, I could still hear them in the distance, toot, toot, tooting away, clamoring for my attention. But, the one thing I noticed is, once all the vehicles had passed through, and I could hear them off in the distance, the birds were so much louder. The fact of the matter is; they had never stopped singing; they were there the whole time. Just like when we’re going through something difficult and we feel like God isn’t there. He never leaves us. It’s just that what’s going on in our life is so loud that unless we stop and really try to hear Him, we won’t be able to.

There’s going to be noise in this life that makes it difficult to hear the voice of God. What do you do? You stand firm, and you keep listening you keep waiting, you keep doing the next right thing and eventually when the noise stops you will be able to hear His voice clearly again. Doesn’t mean He’s not there. Sometimes, like how God spoke to me on this day, He’s trying to show us something and we need to understand that He is God and even when we don’t see it He has everything under control.