“Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)
We often describe our faith journey as “walking with the Lord.” From Genesis to today, that is a great way to describe the relationship between men and women and the Lord.
From the beginning of time, God was all about relationship with His children. This notion of relationship is evident in Genesis 3:8.
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the [a]cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
The picture of walking and talking together in the Garden of Eden seems to have been a normal and regular occurrence. I suggest that Adam and Eve’s need to hide speaks to a pre-existing relationship that suddenly changed when they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17).
God’s heart and desire to be in relationship with His children is evident throughout scripture. It is a common thread that runs through all of history. Consider Enoch. Genesis 5:22-24 tells us that Enoch walked faithfully with God.
“ Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” (Genesis 5:22–24)
In Genesis, there isn’t any reference that Enoch conversed with God. However, in Jude:14 we learn that Enoch prophesied on behalf of the Lord. In other words Enoch first heard from the Lord and then he spoke to the people.
Consider Samuel. You may know the story. Samuel’s mother took him to the temple to be raised by Eli. This was a time when when the “Word from the Lord was rare in those days, visions were infrequent” (1 Samuel 3:1).
As the story goes, Samuel awakes in the night hearing a voice calling his name. Finally he tells his mentor, Eli, who tells him to respond.
“And Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.’’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place” (1 Samuel 3:9)
The result is that Samuel does what Eli instructs
“Then the Lord came and stood and called as at other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for Your servant is listening’” (1 Samuel 3: 10).
This common thread of God’s desire to be in relationship with us and continue to communicate with us is evident throughout both the Old and New Testament. Even when God spoke a word of correction through the prophets of the Old Testament, the purpose was to bring the Children of Israel back into right relationship to their God.
Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice of his life here on earth to ensure that God’s people were and are restored to a right relationship with God. The chasm that sin produced is bridged and we can once again walk intimately with God. The relationship of walking and talking together in the Garden of Eden has been restored.
At Christ’s death, the curtain to the Holy of Holies was rent in two, thus signifying that God is open and inviting all men to meet with Him, to hear from Him, and to walk with Him.
What does it take to walk and talk with the Lord? It takes the attitude and approach that Samuel took. It takes an openness to receive within a relationship of intimacy.
May we be a people who, like Samuel, say, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.”