It is sobering to think that I’ve missed many opportunities to listen, to see what God is doing right in front of me or around me. The noise of my ‘to do’ list and the list of my anxieties can easily drown out what He is doing and will do. The repeated question by Jesus, ‘Are you really listening?’ is sobering. May you and I have open eyes and acute listening to what our Triune God is doing, to what He is showing us in our here and now moments.
“The sower is sowing the seed. The lamp has been lit. Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom. Their responsibility was to pay attention to what they are hearing. Not paying attention to what they were hearing resulted in a missed opportunity to hear. When opportunity after opportunity is missed because of a failure to pay attention, eventually even the opportunity to hear is lost. Just as understanding leads to more understanding, so the repeated failure to pay attention eventually leads to the loss of the ability to hear, that is, losing the opportunity to hear.” - Excerpt. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark by Steve Langford
“We can’t afford to be complacent about God’s glory. The fact is that putting your Christian life on autopilot is the same thing as “walking in the flesh.” When we become unaware, when we take something so precious for granted, our prayers become tedious, witnessing becomes dry, jobs become lackluster, and relationships sag under the weight of selfishness. What’s worse, our communion with our Savior and best friend turns into a chore. The Lord Himself seems to lose vitality in our estimation; He becomes little more than a wooden icon in our hearts, a mere measuring rod for our behavior—someone who purchased our salvation once upon a time, someone in whom we believe in a general, distracted sort of way.” - Excerpt, Joni Eareckson Tada - A Place of Healing
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