emboldened. The powerless are encouraged. The weak are
made strong. Closed doors are opened. The imprisoned are set
free. Names and lives are changed forever.
As a toddler, my son, Jake, had a few favorite and very
exciting Bible storybooks. Each night he begged us to read
them over and over and over. Integral to each story was a very
specific conversation between the person in the story and God.
Interestingly, Jake never questioned how the individual heard
God speak to him or if he even heard God talk out loud. He, like
most children, inherently understood that talking is a basic
method of communication. Jake didn’t express doubt that God
spoke in the past or in the present, or that God could be heard
or understood by people of any age or of any occupation. Jake
just seemed comfortable with the idea that God talked to
everyone because everyone talks.
So on one occasion when I had to discipline my young son
for unruly behavior, I sent him off to his bedroom for what we
called a time-out. As he sauntered down the long hallway to
his room, I suggested that he get “alone with God” and have a
conversation with Him about his attitude. What is a mother to
do when her child yells from his bedroom after only a few short
minutes in confinement, “Mom, I talked to God and I told Him
I’m sorry and He told me I can come out of my room now!”
If children find it so easy to believe that God talks to us and
they possess a basic understanding of why God talks to us,
then why does the idea of God talking to us seem so difficult
for adults to grasp?
In his book Hearing God, Dallas Willard explains that if we
could envision ourselves in a Bible story, then we’d view the
Bible less as dogma and doctrine and more like our own reality.