THE JOURNAL OF LOST THINGS: THURSDAY DEVOTIONAL: speak Lord for thy servant hereth

“Life is full of voices of God, only we lack the spiritual faculty which discerns them--The responsibility of life lies in listening for Divine voices, and in the response to them that we give. We may cultivate the spiritual faculty that hears God’s call, or we may make it obtuse. We may cherish God’s call, or we may silence it; obey it, or rebel against it.”

The Lord never stops talking to us; we just choose whether or not we hear him. In the book of Moses he tells Moses this:

And God spake unto Moses, saying : Behold IAM the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name, for I am without beginning of days, or end of years and is not this endless? 4 And behold, thou art my son, wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands, but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, they never cease.

He is a good, good father, a loving parent, who is always, endlessly looking out for us, and working on our behalf. His work and glory is to bring about the immortality and the eternal life of man. The Lord has been whispering in my ear for a long time, and it has been only recently, that I recognized that voice. For a moment I felt like Samuel, when as a toddler, the Lord called out to him, when he had been put down to sleep. And it wasn’t in a dream state that the Lord called out to Samuel, but the scripture says that the “Spirit of Lord”, stood at the foot of his bed.

1Samuel 3 And ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep;4 That the Lord called Samuel: and he answered, “Here am I.”

But Samuel was like a lot of us, he heard the voice and it sounded familiar; so we ask others if they have spoken to us. So Samuel ran into the old Priest Eli’s room, to find out if he had called. Now Eli was “going blind”, his eyes had “waxed dim”, he said, I called not my son, lie down again. So Samuel went back to bed, and 2 more times during the night he heard this familiar voice calling his name.

We many times receive revelation without recognizing precisely how or when we are receiving revelation David A Bednar: The Spirit of Revelation

The scripture says that Samuel did not “know” the Lord yet and the word had not been revealed to him (yet). It is amazing those words that Samuel had not been taught about the Lord, he had not been properly introduced to Him, neither had the adults who were in charge of him, bothered to teach him. But the Lord did make his presence known to little Samuel,

10 And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth

Moroni 7:48…. that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him ashe is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.

The scripture says that the Lord came, and stood and called. What is the significance that the Lord stood? Does standing mean that in this posture, his voice and message will be clearer? Does it mean that the Lord is presenting himself as the authority? And in that posture of standing he called. What does the Lord say when he calls, what is that call? Is it a request or is it a statement. I believe that the standing or proclaiming of himself, the authority, is the bid to come unto Christ. When he appears to us in the form of “revelation” or communicating, it can take on various forms of an established pattern.

When I was a child growing up, my biggest problem, according to my mother at least, was that I “did not listen”, that my “mouth was always running”. She feared that I would suffer because of this obvious defect and I was pronounced “hard headed. But lately, I have tried to overcome this. I have felt like Samuel and maybe Joan of Arc; hearing voices, exploring ideas that clearly I had not focused on previously. The Lord has revealed a plan for my life, that when I look at it, I am sure I have imagined it, that I wished for it like children do. So surely it is not true, right? I have had very “low “expectations for my life, or no expectations of anything changing, and I feel like, the Father decided to stage an intervention, to help me in my unbelief. He sent messengers, so in effect he “came and stood and called “out to me. He sent 2 priesthood holders, who being guided by the Holy Spirit, asked to know who needed prayer, who needed some interaction in their lives. So they came to my house and said, “We don’t know why we are here”, and I said “I know why you are here, please give me a blessing”. It was a teaching moment and I did my best to lean into it.