16.3 - When Truth Quietly Rises
Based on John 16:13 -15
Background Noise and the Voice Within
Without even touching, I could sense her hands were cold as she placed the earpiece on my head. “Can you hear me?” she said through her microphone, her voice landing right in the middle of my head.
“Yes,” I nodded. I was turned so I couldn’t see her lips, but I could hear her breath. A strange sensation. I was getting a hearing-aid adjustment test.
Every three years, we do this dance with the decibels. She plays a beep; I press a button. Sometimes she plays a beep, and I don’t press the button. Other times, I press the button before she plays a beep. I like to guess; she’s caught onto that.
Part of the test checks how well I do with background noise. She plays a recording of a man talking in a busy restaurant and tells me to push the button when I can no longer hear him. His voice stays the same while the background noise gets louder and louder, so I press the button.
“Where did he go?” I ask.
“Oh, he’s still there, talking away—but you can’t hear him because the background noise has taken over.”
And I think of it again—how easy it is to miss the voice when the world gets loud.
Immediately, I’m transported back into John chapter 16.
“When he comes, he will speak,” Jesus told his guys on that dark, dusty path.
“Great,” I answer into my own silence.
He continues: “When he comes, he will speak and guide you into all the truth.”
My imagination is awake now. “Why me?” I wonder.
“No particular reason,” he says back, with a shrug I can almost hear. “But you’ll have to manage the background noise,” he stresses.
On the night he said that to his guys, background noise wasn’t an issue. For long stretches, the only things that broke their silence were the scrape of sandals and the beating of anxious hearts.
On the day he said that to me, I had a woman speaking in my head and Costco shoppers right outside the booth. My watch pinged. My phone lit up.
Background noise is an issue for me.
He will speak… but we must manage the noise.
Round and round it tumbled within me: “He will speak.” “All the truth.” “He will speak.” “Manage the background noise.” Today, even in the godliest circles, we have music, websites, podcasts. All good, but all facsimiles.
So little silence…
He will speak in the silence we create.
Try it for a while.
Turn off the noise.
Turn on the silence.
He will speak.
“To me? Why me?” you ask.
“Why not?” he responds.
“When?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Whenever you’re silent.”
Silence: The First Language of Truth
Silence is not absence. It is integration.
Silence becomes the next movement of our quiet transformation. To many, silence feels like absence. But inside the human mind, silence is the birthplace of clarity.
Neuroscientist Judson Brewer
“In quiet spaces, the brain integrates scattered experience into meaning.”
Jesus describes the same thing in verse 13: truth rising not from noise or pressure but from a quiet interior space where God and human awareness meet.
The promise of the Spirit—that inner guide, companion, and steadying presence—is not meant to sound mystical or psychological. It is both. It is spiritual truth expressed in a human pattern.
Jesus describes this presence as an inner companion helping a person—any person—recognize the next honest step. That recognition does not arrive through force or fear; it arrives the way dawn arrives—slowly, then all at once.
Truth rises slowly, like dawn.
It worked that way for the disciples, and it works that way for us.
Awakening Within the Story We Already Have
Jesus was not trying to start a new religion or lead his followers away from Judaism. The Spirit of Truth had been spoken of for generations. He stood firmly inside the narrative they grew up with—the feasts, the Scriptures, the aching hope for restoration.
He wasn’t discarding their story; he was deepening it and increasing access to it.
He was showing that this Spirit is not an outside force acting upon remarkable men like priests or prophets, but is available within ordinary men—within them, within us.
The disciples would need months, even years, to integrate this new understanding—the slow, gentle work of seeing the story they inherited and discovering a wiser way of living inside it.
That’s where “all the truth” emerges.
That is the deeper work this series explores: how we discover the truth within us and begin to live more honestly inside the story we’ve inherited.
Psychologist Dan McAdams
“We live our lives through stories; we are the stories we tell ourselves.”
When tragedy strikes and leaves a crack in our inherited story, many of us try to fill it with rationalizations and then turn that side to the wall. Others decide to throw out their story altogether, saying, “If this can happen, then everything I believed is wrong.”
I wanted to do both but could neither accept rationalizations nor discard the cracked narrative. Instead, I suffered the silence until “He” appeared and walked me deeper into the story.
We live our lives through stories.
The Crack in My Own Story
Three-year-old Millie’s cancer was the turning point for me. Her diagnosis and treatment tested the limits of our Sunday school faith. Hundreds of God-fearing people whispered prayers, and for a while, it seemed to be working.
We celebrated clear scans. We looked toward March and the end of treatment. Then, in late November, the crack appeared again—this time as a doctor’s voice saying, “It’s back. There are no more options.”
In February, the brightest little light I have ever known ceased to shine.
And “this little light of mine”—the one I carried since childhood—was snuffed out, too.
For the guys following Jesus down this vineyard path in John 16, the crack sounded loudly when he said, “I must go away.” He turned their attention toward the inherited narratives they carried—purity expectations, temple authority structures, and the weight of feeling evaluated rather than known.
Today, we may be shaped by family expectations, cultural scripts, or quiet wounds we rarely talk about.
In either case, the invitation is the same: don’t throw the story away. Look more deeply into it. Understand how it formed you. Let it become soil for a more intense understanding.
“There is a place in you that has never been wounded.”
John O’Donohue
Jesus called this the Helper—the presence that stands alongside, the inner witness untouched by old narratives, ready to speak when we grow quiet enough to listen.
A Gentler Way of Transformation
Jesus’ teaching wasn’t meant to replace their narrative but to awaken them within it.
Growth that throws everything away is rebellion; growth that looks deeper is wisdom.
Jesus was inviting them—and us—to discover who we truly are inside the story that has shaped us.
This points to something simpler and more beautiful than a religion.
Jesus is not urging his followers to become heroes, crusaders, or world-changers.
He is inviting them to live their already complicated lives with more awareness, more gentleness, and more truthfulness.
This is the kind of transformation he describes—one that emerges through lived experience, not pressure.
When we begin to understand our inherited story, become honest about our questions, grow comfortable with silence, and listen for the quiet truth rising within, we don’t become louder or more driven. We become steadier. Less divided. More at peace in our own skin.
Our relationships soften. Our decisions clarify.
We contribute to the lives around us not because we are on a mission, but because peace has a way of overflowing.
This is abundant life.
Not a trophy.
Not an accomplishment.
Not a path to spiritual superiority.
Just life lived from the inside out—where truth rises slowly and steadies the whole person.
As we move into the next part of John 16—“a little while, and you will not see me”—this reflection becomes a grounding point.
It reminds the disciples that everything Jesus has been describing isn’t about rare spiritual experiences or complex theology. It’s about the slow, human process of becoming more whole.
It prepares them not by assigning tasks, but by reminding them of the gentle path they’re already on.
Even when the world gets louder, the Voice remains:
still speaking,
still guiding.
One day at a time.
One question at a time.
One rising truth at a time.
Legacy Note — For My Grandchildren and Their Children
If you ever find these words, here is what I hope you remember: the quiet inside you is not something to fear. It is something to trust.
The world will try to keep you loud, busy, and distracted—but the truest things you will ever know about yourself, about love, and about God will rise in the still moments you are brave enough to enter.
Listen there.
Your life will grow from that soil.
This is the glimpse I’ve been given, through John’s words and my own walk through loss and light.
Key Takeaways
1. The Spirit’s guidance comes quietly, through presence—not pressure.
2. Background noise is the great enemy of clarity; silence is the doorway.
3. Understanding our inherited story is the beginning of inner transformation.
4. True change emerges slowly, like dawn, not through force.
5. The abundant life is lived from the inside out—not through mission, but through presence.
