Listening to others or to God

What are You Doing

“Too many people aren’t doing what God told them to do because they’re so fired up about what somebody else is doing or not doing.” Joyce Meyer

My wife and I love to watch Joyce Meyer on TV. She preaches more common sense in one broadcast than most preachers do in a year. So when I heard her say this, I asked myself, I wonder how many of us this applies to? A good few of us, I reckon, are more excited about what others are doing than about whatever it is that God has asked us to do. In a way, it seems to be the Christian equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses. We seem to have switched off our attention to what God is saying to us in favour of watching and probably criticising what other people are doing.

We had a young man in one church we attended who was always worrying about who would call him and what they might want. He was in a permanent ‘what if’ state of mind. He would follow everyone’s activity with a microscope ‘just in case they come to me for advice then I will know what they are talking about’. This went on until a visiting speaker stopped suddenly, rounded on the young man, and pointing at him said, “Why are you disobeying God? Why are you not doing what He is asking of you? Why are you not evangelising the streets in the evenings?” The young fellow was mortified, and through repentant tears he said, “I didn’t realise He meant now!” Within weeks that young man was totally changed and winning scores of his age group to Christ by touring the clubs on Friday and Saturday nights.

How many of us are ignoring the Lord because we are paying too much attention to others? What does it take to make us stop and just listen to God? Oh – how tired He must be of us being ‘too busy’ to listen to Him. No wonder He sometimes stills us in order to get our attention.

I like this quote from Hebrews 12:28 “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,” It’s that word ‘acceptably’ which to me means that we come with a clean heart; one that is not distracted by others; one that is prepared to listen to Him as well as to offer our worship and praises.

Time to “be still and know that I am God.”