We tend to expect God in the big moments.

The mountain top. The breakthrough. The chorus of the worship song when everyone's hands go up. And sometimes he's there. But if you read the Old Testament honestly, that's not usually where he shows up.

This week's theme: Stillness.

Today, a prophet who was looking for God in the earthquake, and heard him in the quiet instead.

ELIJAH

Elijah had just had the biggest win of his ministry.

He had gone up against four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. He had called down fire from heaven. He had watched God vindicate him in front of the whole nation of Israel. He had then run for his life because Queen Jezebel had put a price on his head.

Within twenty four hours he had gone from the greatest victory of his life to lying under a broom tree in the wilderness, telling God he wanted to die.

That is a very specific spiritual state. The one where you have just done something huge for God and immediately afterwards feel absolutely empty. Anyone who has ever led anything spiritual knows it. The crash after the peak. The strange grief of the day after.

God didn't preach at Elijah in that moment. He fed him. Twice. Let him sleep. And then, when Elijah was ready, sent him on a forty day walk to a cave on Mount Horeb.

That's where the famous bit happens.

Read that slowly.

Wind. Earthquake. Fire. All the things you would associate with the God who had just called down fire on Mount Carmel. And in each one, the same phrase. The Lord was not in it.

Then a whisper. And Elijah pulled his cloak over his face because he knew, in his body, that this was God.

The Hebrew for "gentle whisper" is qol demamah daqqah. Literally, a voice of thin silence. A sound so quiet it is almost silence itself. God spoke to Elijah in a register so soft that any noise at all would have drowned it out.

Notice what God was doing.

He was not, in this moment, being small. He is not a small God. He is the same God who had thrown fire from heaven the day before. But he was showing Elijah something. He was showing him that the spectacular is not where the intimate happens.

You cannot have a conversation in an earthquake.

Elijah had spent his ministry chasing the big moments. God met him in them and honoured them. But when Elijah was broken, exhausted, and needed to hear God actually speak, God did not give him another Carmel. He gave him a whisper.

If you have been waiting for God to speak to you in something dramatic, this passage should stop you.

He might. He can. He has, for people I love, in ways I cannot explain.

But more often he speaks in a register so quiet that any noise at all covers it. The phone. The podcast. The mental to-do list running underneath everything. The song on in the car. The half-scroll while you're brushing your teeth.

If you never turn the volume down, you will not hear him.

Not because he is not speaking. Because you have made it impossible to hear.

YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY

Find one small moment today when you would normally add noise, and don't.

The walk from the car to the office. The five minutes waiting for the kettle. The shower. Whatever it is. Leave the phone. Skip the podcast. Let it be quiet for that one small window.

Then listen. Not for a booming voice. For the whisper.

WATCH THE NEW VIDEO

If Elijah's whisper landed today, my new video this week goes into the exact same territory. What God is actually doing in the quiet hours you have been trying to fill with noise. Especially the night ones.

OVER TO YOU

Where in your day could you turn the volume down this week? Hit reply with one moment. I read every one.

God bless you, my friend.

P.S. Known: Discovering Who God Says You Are is out now. Newsletter readers still get 50% off for a limited time: