Whisper Read online

At the beginning of my junior year at Central Bible College, there was a special service in which local pastors were invited to chapel. It was the beginning of a new year, and the school wanted to get us plugged into a local church. There must have been fifty pastors packed into the choir loft, and I recognized a few of the faces because they had preached in chapel or pastored one of the larger churches in town.

  I knew that most of the students would land at whatever church was the “it” church that semester. And I was thinking about doing the same thing. I was playing basketball along with taking a full load of classes, so I was tempted to attend a church with a great preacher where I could just sit back and relax.

  That’s when I felt a strange prompting. I’d never felt a leading quite like it before, but I knew exactly which pastor I was supposed to talk to. I can’t explain how or why; I just knew. Right after chapel I made a beeline to Pastor Robert Smiley, and I think I was the only one who did. I didn’t know him, but he knew me because he followed our basketball team.

  I would spend two years of college not just attending West Grand Assembly of God but serving in a wide variety of ways. That church doesn’t exist anymore, and it barely existed then. On a good Sunday, a dozen people would show up. And that almost packed the place, as there were only seven pews! But I’m forever indebted to Pastor Smiley, who let me cut my teeth preaching. He even let me lead worship on occasion and do “special” music once!

  I’m absolutely convinced that I wouldn’t have been ready to plant a church in my twenties if it hadn’t been for Pastor Smiley. He’s part of my cloud of witnesses. And it all started with a prompting.

  Time Sensitive

  Truth isn’t relative, but time is. Parents of toddlers, you know this. To two-year-olds, next week might as well be next year, and next year might as well be never. Why? Because one year represents 50 percent of their lives. If you’re fifty, a year represents 2 percent. To children, one day can feel twenty-five times longer than it does to their parents, and it might be even more pronounced for the children of God.

  With God, “a thousand years are like a day”!16

  With us, a day can feel like a thousand years!

  Those of us who were born after Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man” operate on a different time line than our parents. We microwave our food, Google our questions, real-time our news, and Facebook our friends.

  Everything happens at the speed of light. But in God’s kingdom, things happen at the speed of a seed planted in the ground that has to take root before it can bear fruit. I love millennials, and that’s primarily who I pastor. I love their passion for justice, their desire to make a difference, and their pragmatic idealism. I’m also concerned about what I perceive to be a lack of patience. I’m guilty of it too. We want what our parents have in half the time with half the effort. But I can almost guarantee that our hopes and dreams will take longer than our original estimates.

  Here’s the point: we give up too easily, too quickly. We often get ahead of God instead of keeping in step with the Spirit, or we fall behind out of frustration. It’s not easy discerning His timing, and it’s even harder trusting it, especially when it feels as though God is a day late and a dollar short. But if you’re questioning His timing, perhaps it’s your watch that needs to be adjusted. You get in time with Him by getting in tune with His whisper.

  For David’s Sake

  Versions of this three-word phrase—“For David’s sake”—pop up in multiple places in the Old Testament.17 It’s a testament to God’s faithfulness even when we’re faithless.

  In 853 BC, a king named Jehoram assumed the throne. He was the fifth king of the southern kingdom, and he did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. Jehoram actually killed his brothers to secure the throne. You would expect God to execute judgment in the next verse, wouldn’t you? Not so fast.

  Nevertheless, for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah.18

  This is 117 years after David’s death! David is long gone, but God hasn’t forgotten the promise He made. God has a good memory. He doesn’t forget His people, and He doesn’t forget His promises. The only thing He forgets is the sin He forgives.

  Can I suggest that God has done some things in your life for the sake of someone else?

  I know He has for me. I had a praying grandfather in Elmer Johnson. At night he would take off his hearing aid, kneel next to his bed, and pray. He couldn’t hear himself, but everyone else in the house could. Those are some of my earliest memories. My grandfather died when I was six, but his prayers did not. There have been distinct moments in my life when I’ve received a blessing I know I didn’t deserve, and the Holy Spirit has whispered these words: Mark, the prayers of your grandfather are being answered in your life right now. That will give you goose bumps! God did it “for Elmer’s sake.”

  We’re the beneficiaries of prayers we know nothing about. God was working long before we arrived on the scene, and He’s using us to set up the next generation.

  We tend to think right here, right now.

  God is thinking nations and generations.

  We have no idea how our lives are going to alter the course of history downstream, but there is a divine domino effect for every decision we make. Don’t underestimate the potential impact of obeying God’s prompts. Those are the whispers that will echo for all eternity!

  Unanswered Prayers

  During the early days of our church planting, our church office was a spare bedroom in our home. When our daughter, Summer, was born, it doubled as church office by day and bedroom by night. That got really old really fast, so we started looking for office space. I found two row houses on Capitol Hill that were absolutely perfect, and I let God know that. But both doors closed in dramatic fashion. In both instances another party beat us to the punch and put contracts on those properties right before we did. Not only did God not answer our prayers, but it felt as if He was opposing our efforts. It was so confusing and frustrating that I almost gave up the hunt.

  A few weeks later I was walking by 205 F Street when I felt a very strange prompting. It was as though the Holy Spirit jogged my memory and surfaced a name. I had met the owner of that row house a year before, but I wasn’t sure the name that had surfaced out of my subconscious was his name. This was pre-Google, so I actually had to look up the name in something called the white pages, and there were eight listings of that name. There wasn’t even a For Sale sign in front of the house. Why would I call him? And what would I say? But I obeyed that prompting by dialing a phone number I wasn’t sure was his.

  When someone answered the phone, I quickly introduced myself. But the person on the other end of the line wouldn’t let me finish my sentence. “I was just thinking about you,” he said. “I’m considering selling 205 F Street, and I wanted to know if you would like to buy it before I put it on the market.”

  That’s kairos!

  That row house became our first office. But even more significant than its function was its location, because 205 F Street is next to 201 F Street, an old crack house that would become Ebenezers Coffeehouse! If God had answered our original prayers for the two row homes that were “absolutely perfect,” we wouldn’t have been in the position to buy and build our coffeehouse. So praise God for unanswered prayers!

  Our heavenly Father is far too wise to always give us what we want when we want it. He loves us too much to do that. Don’t settle for what’s expedient. Don’t settle for second best. Hold out for the best that God can give. Then hold on.

  Supernatural Insomnia

  A great biblical example of divine timing and prompting may be a case of supernatural insomnia. In the book of Esther, the Jewish people were on the brink of genocide because of a plot hatched by an evil man named Haman. His archenemy was Mordecai, Queen Esther’s cousin. Haman hated Mordecai so much that he erected a seventy-five-foot pole on which to impa
le him! But on the eve of Mordecai’s execution, God showed up and showed off.

  That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him. It was found recorded there that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s officers who guarded the doorway, who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.19

  You can read the rest of the story in the book of Esther, but God flipped the script in one fell swoop. Mordecai, riding the king’s horse and wearing the king’s robe, was given a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Susa, and Haman was impaled on the gallows he built!

  A few key observations.

  First, God doesn’t always reward good deeds on the spot. Have you ever done something that seemingly went unnoticed? It’s frustrating at the time, but I’ve learned to trust God’s time line. He doesn’t always reward us right then or right there. But I promise you this: He’ll reward your faithfulness somehow, someway, sometime. Mordecai had saved the life of King Xerxes by foiling an assassination plot, but he must have felt as though his good deed had been forgotten. Yet God was making sure it was remembered and rewarded at just the right time, just in time.

  Second, insomnia is sometimes a sign that God wants to speak to us. When I wake up at a strange hour for a strange reason, I take it as a prompting to pray. Sure, it’s sometimes caused by poor dietary choices the night before, but not always. Why not pray until you fall back asleep? It beats counting sheep.

  Third, God can accomplish more in one day than you can accomplish in a lifetime.

  Now let’s have a little fun with this story. What are the chances that King Xerxes would get a case of insomnia on the eve of Mordecai’s execution? For the sake of simplicity, let’s call it 1 in 365. As the ruling monarch, King Xerxes probably had the biggest library in Persia. There is no way to know its exact contents, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on par with the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. The British Museum puts the number of Ashurbanipal’s holdings at 30,943 scrolls and tablets.20 If we use that as a benchmark, the chances of King Xerxes choosing the book of the chronicles was 1 in 30,943.

  Finally, we have no idea how big the book of the king’s reign was, but I bet it was closer to an encyclopedia than a comic book. At the end of every day that Congress is in session, the proceedings are printed in the Congressional Record. The record includes the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance, along with petitions, nominations, text amendments, and joint resolutions. The record of the first day of the 115th Congress was 101 pages long.21 Of course it included the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, so it might be a little above average. And I’m sure the Persians weren’t as copious as we are. But Xerxes reigned for twenty-one years. My point? It was a big book! We’ll keep it conservative and put the odds of the book being opened to that very page, that very paragraph about Mordecai as 1 in 1,000.

  When we multiply those numbers, the odds of Xerxes landing on the page profiling Mordecai’s good deed is 1 in 11,294,195,000. That’s when you know that God is part of the equation!

  Discerning the difference between coincidence and providence cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula, but God loves pulling off the impossible against all odds. He also loves using the least qualified candidate to accomplish His plans and purposes.

  Crazy Promptings

  On February 24, 1958, Life magazine published a feature article titled “Mass Murder Trial of a Teen-Age Gang.” It pictured seven gang members accused of murdering Michael Farmer, a fifteen-year-old boy disabled by polio. The trial arrested the nation’s attention, not unlike the O. J. Simpson trial almost four decades later. But it totally wrecked a Pennsylvania pastor named David Wilkerson. One of the boy’s faces—the meanest of the seven—was seared in his memory. Others read the article, but Wilkerson wept over it without knowing why.

  Wilkerson would go on to start a worldwide ministry called Teen Challenge, write a New York Times best-selling book titled The Cross and the Switchblade, and start Times Square Church. But it all started with one prompting: a magazine article. Like Paul reacting to the vision of a man in Macedonia calling for help, Wilkerson could not ignore what he perceived to be a whisper from God. Sitting in his study late on a Sunday night in February 1958, he discerned the voice of God: “Go to New York and help those boys.”22

  Moving from rural Pennsylvania to minister to the gangs of New York City was a crazy prompting but not any crazier than some of the promptings recorded in Scripture. It was a crazy prompting that led a cupbearer in Babylon to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. It was a crazy prompting that led Philip to intersect with an Ethiopian eunuch in the middle of nowhere. It was a crazy prompting that led Ananias to pray for a terrorist named Saul. And it was a crazy prompting that led to a divine appointment between a Jewish apostle named Peter and an Italian soldier named Cornelius.23

  Prior to reading that article in Life, David Wilkerson had gone on a mission trip to Argentina. That trip produced a “restlessness”24 in his spirit. It’s difficult to define the feeling, but it’s a sixth sense that God is getting you ready for something else, someplace else. “Sometimes you have to go halfway around the world,” noted his son Gary, “to realize you’re not called there.”25 That mission trip produced not only a restlessness but an openness to go anywhere, to do anything. And in my experience that’s what mission trips do. When you get out of your comfort zone, you hear God’s voice more clearly. It’s often a door that leads to a door. Or maybe I should say, a prompting that leads to a prompting.

  Effective Frequency

  Let me zoom out and make an important observation. Learning to discern God’s promptings takes practice. Remember, it’s like learning a new language. You don’t always pick up on the nuances at first. But if you give it some time, you’ll get better at hearing those subtle whispers. And the good news is that God is patient. It’s not three strikes and you’re out in God’s kingdom. It’s more like “seventy times seven” second chances!26

  There is a phenomenon in advertising known as effective frequency, which refers to the number of times you have to hear a message before you’ll respond to it. The rule of seven was the rule of thumb for a long time, but the magic number seems to be climbing. Maybe because there are so many voices vying for our attention.

  “Just do it.”

  “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.”

  “Breakfast of champions.”

  I don’t need to tell you who ran those ads, do I? You know it was Nike, Alka-Seltzer, and Wheaties. Did you know that those ad campaigns ran twenty-six, forty-three, and eighty-seven years respectively?27 They are brilliant examples of effective frequency, and it seems to me that God advertises His plans and purposes in much the same way. He patiently prompts us over and over and over again. And He often does it by using various languages.

  Have you noticed the different ways in which God got someone’s attention in Scripture? And the number of times it took? It’s a study in effective frequency. For Samuel, the effective frequency was four late-night whispers. For Peter, the effective frequency was an early-morning rooster crowing twice. For Saul, the effective frequency was a vision and a voice at midday.28

  If you’re anything like me, it takes God a few times to get your full attention. And that’s why He speaks in stereo. In other words, He whispers in more than one language. It’s His way of making doubly or triply sure that we’re picking up what He’s throwing down. And for those of us who are a little slow on the uptake, God is gracious enough to give two or three or four confirmations. The apostle Paul is Exhibit A, and Ananias is the key witness.

  Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.29

  Wouldn’t you think that knocking Saul off hi
s horse on the road to Damascus would have been enough of a sign to turn him into Paul? But Saul’s effective frequency required a little more than that. First, God spoke in an audible voice from heaven. Second, He spoke through a double vision: Saul had a vision of Ananias while Ananias had a vision of Saul. Third, God spoke to Ananias with very detailed directions to find Saul on Straight Street. And fourth, He spoke by miraculously healing Paul’s eyesight. That’s stereo surround sound. That’s effective frequency. That was God making quadruply sure Saul heard His voice.

  Status-Quo Bias

  The Holy Spirit wears lots of hats in Scripture. He hovers, gifts, convicts, reveals, and reminds. But when He wants to get us out of our routines, He often stirs our spirits.

  The LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel.30

  The stirring of the Holy Spirit can be a feeling of restlessness, as David Wilkerson experienced. Sometimes it starts out as a God-ordained desire that becomes fire in our bones. Sometimes it’s an idea that hits critical mass. And sometimes God rocks the boat—or capsizes it.

  You can call it a ping, a poke, a nudge, or an impression. I call it a prompting, and I liken it to the Holy Spirit’s elbow right in our ribs! The Spirit often stirs us in the same way that we’re called to spur one another toward good deeds. It’s the motivation to stop, to start, or to change.

  This is a strange bit of personal trivia, but I always set my alarm to an even number. I’m not sure why I do this, but I know I’m not alone. Every time I confess this idiosyncrasy, “even” people come out of the closet. Some “odd” people do too! Either way, we’re creatures of habit. Our natural tendency is to do what we’ve been doing, think what we’ve been thinking, and say what we’ve been saying.

  My affinity for even numbers when it comes to alarm clocks is an example of a phenomenon called the status-quo bias. The term was first employed by two psychologists, William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty nearly three decades ago.31 Simply put, it’s the tendency to keep doing what you’ve been doing without giving it much thought.