Streams in the Desert June 30 Daily Devotional

There was silence, and I heard a still voice (Job 4:16, margin).
A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a book called True
Peace. It was an old medieval message, and it had but one
thought-that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.
I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so began to get
still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din.
Some were my own voices, my own questions, some my very prayers.
Others were suggestions of the tempter and the voices from the world's turmoil.
In every direction I was pulled and pushed and greeted with noisy
acclamations and unspeakable unrest It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them and to answer some of them; but God said,
"Be still, and know that I am God." Then came the conflict of
thoughts for tomorrow, and its duties and cares; but God said, "Be still."
And as I listened, and slowly learned to obey, and shut my ears to every sound, I found after a while that when the other voices
ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still small voice in the depths of my being that began to speak with an inexpressible

tenderness, power and comfort.
As I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, the voice of
wisdom, the voice of duty, and I did not need to think so hard, or
pray so hard, or trust so hard; but that "still small voice" of the
Holy Spirit in my heart was God's prayer in my secret soul, was
God's answer to all my questions, was God's life and strength for
soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer and all blessing: for it was the living GOD Himself as my
life, my all.
It is thus that our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord,
and we go forth to life's conflicts and duties like a flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night the cool and crystal
drops of dew. But as dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews
of His grace never come to the restless soul.--A. B. Simpson.