Inside Story: A Voice in the Dark
Inside Story for Friday 14th of February 2025
By Andrew McChesney
Grace Babcock woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of an angry voice. “You don’t know,” the voice said. “You don’t understand.”
Image © Pacific Press
Grace wasn’t scared. If anything, she was annoyed about being woken up in her one-bedroom apartment at the Holbrook Indian School, where she worked as a teacher. She listened.
“God is using you like a puppet,” the voice said. “There is stuff that you don’t know. You are following God blindly, and God is tyrannical.”
Grace had been struggling to trust God. The recent death of a Holbrook student in a bus accident had hit her hard. She had many questions for God, but she hadn’t really wanted to talk to Him about them.
Now the voice was accusing God, and she didn’t like that, either.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
The voice fell silent.
But the accusations against God hung heavily in the room. Grace didn’t want to talk to God, but she thought that it was only fair that He be given an opportunity to respond. She asked God about each specific accusation that she had heard. Silence. She fell asleep.
The next day, Grace went to a nature spot where she often liked to think. Sitting on a brown rock, she brought up the accusations again to God. Silence. As night fell, she went home.
The next day, she returned to the nature spot. Again, silence. But as she walked home, she sensed a voice say, “You don’t need to know the answers to these questions that you are asking. You need to have faith and trust.”
“That’s true,” she said. “I don’t need to know the answers. But I do need to know that You are good. Right now, I don’t know that You are good.”
At home, Grace opened the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and began to read. As she read, she sensed a voice say, “Look up.”
Looking up, she saw a picture from a coloring book on her refrigerator. The picture had been given to her by a fifth-grade student, and it depicted Jesus’ cross and the words of John 3:16. “You did that for us, Jesus,” Grace said. “Since You did that, You are good. You really are good. I can trust You, even though I don’t have answers to all my questions.”
This mission story offers an inside look at a previous Thirteenth Sabbath project. Grace Babcock teaches elementary students at the US-based Holbrook Seventh-day Adventist Indian School, which received the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in 2021. Thank you for supporting the spread of the gospel with this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on March 29.
God really does speak to us in these modern times, if we will listen for Him. I know that from personal experience. 40 years after I left the SDA Church, God called me back. I was alone in a quiet place at the time and the voice I “heard” could not have been from another person. I perceived the words as clearly as if another person was in the room with me, but it was more an impression rather than sound. I experienced that four times. The first time the voice said “Read My Book” – but I was alone, so I dismissed it as my imagination the first two times it happened. The third time, as I heard the words, my eyes were drawn to a Bible on my TV stand, which I had put there in memory of my mother, who had died recently. Suddenly I understood that God was asking me to read the Bible. I began doing that, and after a time I was convinced I had been wrong to leave the Church. The last time I heard the voice it asked me “Is there anything more important than doing the will of God?” I thought, but nothing came to mind. Then the voice said “In that case, there are changes you need to make.” Since then, God has been making many positive changes in my life. He also healed my throat cancer after months of chemo and radiation treatments had failed to do so. I prayed and put myself in God’s hands, saying “if it is Your will, please heal me, and if not, thank you for all you have done for me.” Within days the cancer was gone and it has not returned after 4 years. Praise God for modern miracles!
To God be the glory. Praising God for modern day miracles