Limiting Distraction--Unfinished Business

Some times we struggle to hear God's voice because we have failed to do something that He has told us. We don't hear God because He is not giving us anymore direction until we act on what has already been given. I am reminded of the story of the pastor who came to a congregation and his first sermon was wonderful. The only problem was that he just continued to preach the same sermon over and over, week after week. Eventually, the Elders of the church came to him and said, "We love your preaching, but when are you going to preach something new?" He replied, "When you start doing this one, I will give you another."

I have found that God seems strangely silent sometimes because I have been given direction but I am dragging my feet on following it. These are great learning moments. When we fail to heed God's direction or resist, we have a wonderful opportunity to examine what we are placing in higher priority to God--maybe fear, comfort, convenience, immediate gratification or a host of other motivators.

What unfinshed business do you have right now that may be causing a gap in your relationship with God? Is there anything you feel lead to do, but are resisting? It may help to identify whatever the block is, but regardless of whether or not you identify the obstacle, move. The most basic movement often times is all we need. Peace from the Practical Disciple.

Limiting Distractions--clutter

So much of hearing God's voice is just slowing down which for most of us involves simplifying our lives. One way to isolate God's voice is just to limit the many other voices speaking to us. Two years ago during Lent I decided that I want to work on simplicity. I did so by ruthlessly attacking clutter and excess in my life. Specifically, I set aside 40 grocery sacks in my closet and every day for 40 days, I filled and got rid of a sack. Many sacks went to the thrift shop in our church, some went to people I knew, and a surprising number were just trash.

I learned a host of discipleship lessons during this discipline. One of the most profound was that everything we own, owns a little bit of us. Each item is calling to us in some way--"Keep me, store me, use me, clean me, etc." Perhaps, that's why Jesus told the disciples to bring so little with them on missionary journeys. Every item you have can be a demanding distraction. So, one simple way to begin to clear the air to hear God's voice is to simply purge junk in your life.

I encourage you to reflect on just how often you find yourself pondering what you need to do with stuff in your life. How much time and space in your life is consumed by stuff? How and what could you realistically eliminate? Blessings from The Practical Disciple

Isolating God's Voice

I had in a prior post written about having a basic daily devotional time with God. There is a lot of value in doing this in terms of honing your awareness of God's voice in your daily life. When I say voice, I mean it in a broad sense of God expressing Himself through any number of ways. This could be a synchronicity, a person sharing a right word at a right time, a hymn or song on the radio, a strong intuition, a dream, vision, or insight through the Word, etc.

What I have noticed is that when we step apart from our daily activity and seek to observe God's activity in our life, then we learn to discern God's activity from other activity. Imagine if I were to bring you to a symphony and asked you to tell me when you heard the French Horn. If you didn't have much classical instrument background you might be able to rightly pick it's voice out here and there. But lets pretend that I send you home with a couple of cd's of French Horn parts to listen to. You sit down each evening for a few minutes listening. The next time I bring you to the symphony, not only do you hear the French Horn, but you can track it with a high degree of success throughout the symphony. A daily devotional time, particularly with time in the Word, serves as that experience of isolating the 'voice'. It develops your ear so that you can hear God's voice in the clamoring noise of other voices.

Learning to be still before God through a similar practice of quieting your mind and sitting with a passage from scripture can also really help you hear God's voice. If nothing else it helps you filter out unwanted verbage of the world.

Blessings from The Practical Disciple

More on God-incidents

My most recent post drew a couple of comments and a few direct contacts regarding God-incidents. It obviously struck a chord with some folks, so it seems worthy of more attention. My prior post was about responding to God-incidents. I feel the need to back up and address recognizing God incidents.

When I say God incident I am referring to those revelatory moments when we recognize what could be considered random events as actually God's activity in our lives. We can actively hone our awareness of these moments. The first step in recognizing something is knowing what you are looking for specifically. That may sound simplistic, but how often do we put things before God that are so broad and generic that even if God responds, we may not be able to recognize the answer. We say something like "God what do you want me to do with my life?" or "God help me find a spouse?" Learning to be more specific in our conversation with God is one helpful key in moving toward greater discernment. Get more specific with questions like, "God could you give me some indication of whether or not I need to stay in my current job?" or even, "God indicate or open some doors for me to move through, if it is your desire for me to shift away from what I am doing now."

A second key to this whole discernment process is being very open to whatever response God may give you. I call this holding a pray in an open hand. What I mean by an open hand is that you don't cling to an expected response. You lift upto God your desire or question, but you don't cling to some fore drawn conclusion. When we lift up very specific requests, I find that some times we already know what we want as God's response, so we are only looking for our expectation. God seems to frequently exceed my expectation or at least respond in some oblique way I never anticipated. Trust is necessary. To me the perfect biblical example of this is Jesus in the Garden of Gethesemane. He comes before God with a very specific request--"Let this cup pass from me." But he holds it in a open hand, "Not my will be done, but thine."

Third, we actively intentional look for God's response. How many times have you prayed for God's guidance, but not bothered to then just sit and listen for a response from God? I must confess that too often I will ask for guidance and then just move right on to the next things in my prayer list. Learn to pause and listen. By listen I mean let go of other thoughts tugging at you. Pay attention to the images, memories, events, and/or people that come to mind as you quietly set with God and the concern of your heart. Do those things seem significant to your prayer. If so, how are they significant. Also, learn to look back on a day or week and say, "How do I think God has responded to my prayer?"

These are invaluable skills to help hone your awareness. I will share more in my next blog post so stayed tuned. Thank you, The Practical Disciple, John Arnold

Responding to God-Incidence

Some events occur and the coincidence of it is so unbelievable that it takes greater faith to consider it a coincidence than it does to believe that it is a God incident. I once was trying to find someone's apartment who had an emergency need. My prayer was to find this person quickly and without a conflict with his father who was drunk and in the home. I had never been to his apartment. When a friend of mine and I went to retrieve our friend who was in trouble, we could not find the apartment number he had given us. I began to feel that perhaps my prayers were unheard. I rapidly decided that we shouldn't waste time looking for the apartment. We should just ask someone where it was. My friend who was driving ran upto a random apartment. He came out with our friend. We had coincidentally gone to an apartment he had fled to. The apartment number we had written down did not exist. Coincidence? I don't think so.

How should we respond when a God-incidence occurs?--A chance phone call or acquaintance comes at just the right time of our need, our funds run dry and a check for just the right amount appears unanticipated, etc. I often think of Romans 1:21 "Though they knew God, they neither honored God or gave thanks so he gave them over to futile thinking and the darkness of their minds." I have learned that my immediate response to a God-incidence needs to be to recognize it as a gift from God and give thanks. Give credit where credit is due.

The second thing that I seek to do is to honor God for the gift. We honor God by being obedient. Often times within the event there is some calling. There is a need for us to act. I find that when we are either thankful and/or obedient with what is given, then God seems to unfold the gift even further.

We also can honor a gift by telling others the story of what God has done. Share your story. In the process you may bless someone else. You may become an inspiring God-incident for another person.

Blessings to you as you seek to appreciate and honor all that God does in your life.