Are You Listening?

Is it just me or has our world become overly noisy and chaotic?  With the age of technology we are bombarded with tweets, emails, texts, IM's, Snaps, and phone calls.  Our minds have become a whirlwind of tasks, expectations, desires, obligations, and so on. We can't even complete one task without two more hovering over our heads. We have become way too good at tuning things out so we can think clearly to complete whatever it is we are working on in that moment. 

My pastor issued a challenge to those of us that attend the Sunday morning prayer time to really focus on hearing God speak to us. I have to admit (shamefully) that I thought it would be easy. I tend to be a list maker, so I thought I would add it to my list of tasks and just check it off. As I sit here on this Friday night I have to say that I've realized that was not at all what he meant!

This week was packed with the usual suspects vying for my attention, and I found myself really fighting to make sure that I was open to hear God speak to me.  I didn't bombard God with a list of needs, I just wanted to hear what He had to say.  I don't mean that I hear God verbally speak to me out of the sky while my walls and windows shake. I mean that I hear God speak to my heart, and I know its Him because I love Him and have a relationship with Him. I am SO thankful that I took my pastor's words to heart.

As I tried to push through the clamor that has now become an accepted part of my life I could tell that this pleased Him.  As life continued to move at its frantic rate and I continued to let Him know that I was so happy to be His child and I longed to hear Him speak to my heart I could feel Him smile at me. I guess something that I had forgotten (shamefully) was that God is a God of the practical. He cares about every part of our lives because He loves us.

I believe that the hurried pace of our world has caused us to tune out the very voice of God. In our desire to complete a task and mark if off our list we will rush and scurry not once including the God of the universe in our thought process let alone our decision making.  Then when things don't go well because we are nothing more than mere humans trying to chart our own course, we blame God for putting us through trials that are too hard for us to bear. We don't have to put ourselves through that.......God wants to be involved in our lives!

God created us to spend time with Him!  It's in there. In Genesis we are told that God came down and walked with Adam in the cool of the day. Why did He do that? It was because He loves His creation......US!   He loves to spend time with us! Isn't that exciting?

So now my sweet friends, I want to pass this gift off to you. I challenge you to make it a point to listen to God speak to you. Let Him know that you care what He wants for your life. Open your heart to His voice......I know you won't be sorry because I'm not!