There are days when I come to the Word of God and I am in a rush. I feel pressure to get on with life. Opening my Bible on those days is more of a habit rather than a meeting with my creator. I look at the pages with the intent to read but the ink on the paper passes before my eyes without registering. I blink, and realize I have no idea what I just read. Some days I just give up. Other days and thankfully today was one, I stop, take a deep breath, pray through what is causing the shallowness, and try again asking the Lord to ease my heart – and oh, I also release getting done what I planned to do… Some days I acknowledge that there is nothing more important than to spend time with the one who is my life, Colossians 3:1 – 3.
There is nothing that I can do that is more important than spending time with Him. Not this blog, not my ministry, not my family, nothing. I do not acknowledge that every day. I am too much in a rush. The things I have planned or that others have planned for me are more important than taking time to meet with the one who created me and gives me life. After all, what would happen if I did not get them all done? That would be a tragedy of Biblical proportions surely. Not so much. I am not that important. I need to go slower and spend the time with Him…
What do you do when you have an extreme difficulty in hearing Him?
ReplyDeleteKy – what a great question. Not sure I have a great answer. First, if you have not read the 9/21 post, “Hear or Do,” do that it is here: http://tiny.cc/218anw. That being said hearing God is something about which I am constantly learning. What is becoming clearer is that the more familiar with the Word I am, the fresher my exposure to it, the more attuned I am to hear Him. But it is a battle.
ReplyDeleteI do not know about your experience but many times when I open the Word to begin to spend time with Him, my thoughts are flooded with things I need to do – important things like making sure I rolled up the garden hose yesterday; or more distracting, if possible, great ideas for the next project. What is becoming clearer is that the enemy knows me well and is eager to supply ideas that are good to keep me from the best of spending time with Him. What I have to do is to let all of that go. I have begun – and I stress here that I still struggle with this – to pray and surrender the flood of ideas to the Lord and trust Him to bring back those which are important. I have to work to quiet my mind and heart to get before Him. That is the biggest block for me.
The second thing is learning to discern when He is leading. You know when someone calls and you recognize immediately who they are by the sound of their voice? That does not happen the first several times they call. It takes time to learn the timbre, pace, and structure of their speech. It seems to be the same with the Lord. I am learning that He speaks to me, at least in nudges. Usually it is a thought about a person or situation that is out of context. I am learning that in many cases that is the Lord prompting me to either pray or get in touch with that individual.
Dallas Willard’s book, Hearing God, is excellent on this(http://tiny.cc/758anw). I developed a study on listening prayer for our small group a couple of years ago as well that may be helpful. John Eldredge has a series of messages on prayer that I have also found helpful (http://tiny.cc/098anw).