God Still Speaks

Jodie L. Howell, Master of Divinity student, Orlando Dunnam campus

“The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.”  Isaiah 50:4

One of my earliest seminary textbooks was Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Eugene Peterson) for SF501- Introduction to Spiritual Formation. Although I took the class from Dr. Steve Harper nearly five years ago and have read countless books since, one brief passage from that volume has become defining for my life of prayer – “Prayer begins when God addresses us. First God speaks: our response, our answer, is our prayer. This is basic to understanding the practice of prayer: we never initiate prayer, even though we think we do” (273). Long mentored by my mother in intercessory prayer and personally convinced of its importance, I had arrived at a place where I could not keep up with the snowball effect of ever increasing requests. My prayer lists had become overwhelmingly long and burdensome. This simple revelation that I could trust God’s initiative in prayer, instead of my own, came as an incredible freedom.

A recent happening stands out in my memory as an illustration of God’s initiative in prayer. I had left campus, hungry and exhausted but still needing to visit my ministry mentor. Stopping at a grocery store for some food, I noticed a small display of roses near the entrance. "I should buy some for my mentor," I thought. And so I did. While listening to a worship song, “You Are Mine,” on route to her home, I remember “hearing” – "These flowers are not from you, they are for Gayle from her Father who loves her." When I got to the house I played Gayle the song, handed her the flowers and passed on "the message." Her eyes filled with tears and she thanked me but said nothing more. We began to talk about ministry but before long she paused and then said, "I need to tell you something. I saw those same roses recently and thought, 'No one will ever buy me flowers again.'" The roses, song and message were in response to her silent, brokenhearted cry, a prayer that was answered because of God’s initiative! There is a weary world waiting to hear a sustaining word from the “instructed tongues” of those who will listen to God with an awakened ear – may they not wait in vain.