[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0630":3},"JUNE 30\r\nThere was silence, and I heard a still voice (Job 4:16, margin).\r\nA score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a book called True\r\nPeace. It was an old medieval message, and it had but one\r\nthought-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.\r\nI thought this would be a very easy matter, and so began to get\r\nstill. 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.\r\nSome were my own voices, my own questions, some my very prayers.\r\nOthers were suggestions of the tempter and the voices from the world's turmoil.\r\nIn every direction I was pulled and pushed and greeted with noisy\r\nacclamations and unspeakable unrest It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them and to answer some of them; but God said,\r\n\"Be still, and know that I am God.\" Then came the conflict of\r\nthoughts for tomorrow, and its duties and cares; but God said, \"Be still.\"\r\nAnd 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\r\nceased, 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\r\n\r\ntenderness, power and comfort.\r\nAs I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, the voice of\r\nwisdom, the voice of duty, and I did not need to think so hard, or\r\npray so hard, or trust so hard; but that \"still small voice\" of the\r\nHoly Spirit in my heart was God's prayer in my secret soul, was\r\nGod's answer to all my questions, was God's life and strength for\r\nsoul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer and all blessing: for it was the living GOD Himself as my\r\nlife, my all.\r\nIt is thus that our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord,\r\nand 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\r\ndrops of dew. But as dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews\r\nof His grace never come to the restless soul.--A. B. Simpson.",1783499793164]