Listen Up

I have a lot of topics I've been meaning to write about for weeks now. The ideas circulate in my brain for a while but when I sit down at the computer to exhale my thoughts, there is no interest left to project them out down from my head to my finger tips to the keyboard. Sometimes I feel a strange pressure rising up in my chest. I wonder what it is that I've forgotten to do but the source of the pressure is not from what needs to be done but what I think I've got to do in order to maintain this fictional notion of productivity. It bugs me that it's hard to just sit in His presence sometimes. To just be present. To listen...

We spend a lot of time asking God to help us get to where we want to go, to feel what we want to feel, or to become what we think we should be. We say "I'm ready God! Anytime you want to do my will, I'm ready!" Then we wonder why it seems like God isn't doing anything. He's just not doing what we want. Maybe if we took the time to truly align our hearts with God's direction for our life, we would ask Him for things that He would grant. I know I often feel like I have to be doing, doing, doing to be aligned with God's purpose for my life. It's as if we have to hustle Jesus for progress in this world. "See God? See how much I did? Wanna hook me up with some money, a husband/wife, a new place, or a better job?" Oswald Chambers wrote "Sometimes there is nothing to obey and our only task is to maintain a vital connection with Jesus Christ, seeing that nothing interferes with it."

Technology makes it so easy to constantly be reminded of the work yet to be done, the people we still need to call, the things we need to fix. Paul said that as Christians "We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort..." I think it's a good reminder to know that God's not looking down at anyone thinking "No, no, no! If only he had chosen to work another hour more he would have been noticed by his boss, gotten the promotion, earned enough money to start that non-profit he always dreamed of, met his wife, started a family and lived happily ever after. Well, now he's just going to die alone, stuck in the quicksand of middle-management for the rest of his life." 

We should try our hardest to do great things for the Kingdom, but we should also try to not try too hard. We have to understand that our efforts are futile to a certain extent when they overtake what it is God actually has planned for us. We complicate everything about God's plan when it's really more simple than we think. All it takes is for us to slow down every now and again. Turn off anything electronic and just be still. Listen. Don't put a time limit on it. Seek His voice in every and all situations and you'll be surprised how He sounds.