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Note: This is the text
from a drama that was performed before the sermon was
preached.
Marcy: (On the phone)
“Are you sure you didn’t grab mine by mistake on your
way to the airport? Well, this is crazy! I had
to use them to drive my car home from work tonight, I
had to use them to get into the house, and I’ve
looked everywhere I can think of!!” …. “I am not yelling at
you, Mark, I’m just…yelling. I’ve got to go back to the
office right now, and I don’t have a Fred Flintstone car.”
…. “Okay. I guess I’ll keep looking.”
(We hear the sound of a
call-waiting line “beeping in.”)
“I gotta go, Hon, the other
line. Have a safe flight. Call me when you get to the
hotel.” (Looks at Caller ID but visibly does not
recognize the number. Clicks over to the other line anyway.)
“Hello?”
God: “Hi, Marcy.”
Marcy: (Continues
tearing apart room. Still no idea who is calling.
Tentatively.) “Hi…?”
God: “It’s God.”
Marcy: (Still
rummaging, this time through her purse.) “Scott who?”
God: “No, (with a
little more enunciation) it’s God.”
Marcy: (Spoken as if
she does not recognize the name, still distracted by trying
to find her keys.) “God.” (Finally, recognition.
Suddenly stops moving/drops purse). “Oh, GOD! Oh,
Gol-ly.”
God: “I wanted to call
you. Let’s pick up where we left off.”
Marcy: (Confused)
“Left off?”
God: “Well, we were
talking in the car after church last month, but when the
engine light came on, you had to go. And we tried to talk at
the retreat last week, but you found a spider in your
sleeping bag, so we got…cut off. And then we were talking
last night, but Timmy started chasing Janet and her friends
with his dirty diaper, so…”
Marcy: “So you’re
calling me…on the telephone…”
God: “Eh, I thought
I’d try something new.”
Marcy: (Giggles a
little) “It’s a funny image.”
God: “I’m sure.”
Marcy: (Still
giggling) “I’ve got like 1,000 jokes about your wireless
calling plan racing through my head right now.”
God: (Dryly)
“Yes. And they’re all funny.”
Marcy: (Realizing)
“Right. Okay….well, thanks for calling. Uh, I wasn’t really
prepared to…” (We hear sound of other line beeping in.
She looks at Caller ID.) “Oh my, I have to grab my other
line. It’s my office and I was supposed to be there 15
minutes ago. There’s a bit of an emergency. Can you hold on
for two seconds?”
God: “Of course.”
Marcy: (Clicks over to
other line) “I know, I know. I lost my car keys and I’ve
been looking for them for a half hour.” …. “If I had
a second set, Joan, we wouldn’t be having this
conversation.” …. “Just stall him until I get there.
I don’t know. Start by walking him through August revenue
and integrated EBIT for the Pepsi Account.” …. “No,
I’ve got the hard copy with me, but you can get the
worksheet off my computer.” (Sigh) “Go to My
Documents / Excel / Financials/ Pepsi / August 2007.” ….
“No, it’s not password protected.” …. “Cuz it’s
not.” …. “Cuz I’m just that kind of thrill-seeker,
Joan!” …. “Okay, right after I have a second set of keys
made, I’ll password protect my computer, and begin flossing
my teeth more regularly. In the meantime (realizes)…AHHHH,
I have to go, I have God on the other line.” …. “You
heard me.” (Clicks back over to other line.) “I’m so
sorry!!”
God: “You really
should password protect.”
Marcy: (Sighs, tired
of that subject) “I know.”
God: “But that’s not
why I’m calling.”
Marcy: “Thank God.
(Realizes) “Thank you.” (Simply stated, no stress on
“thank” or “you.”)
God: “Marcy, I am
calling on you to begin using your gifts to strengthen my
kingdom.”
Marcy: (Truly
confused) “Okay…but, unless your kingdom has a big
demand for those who can whistle with two fingers or
parallel park a minivan, I’m not sure what I can do.”
God: “Then let me
show you.”
Marcy: “I…” (We hear
the sound of other line beeping in. She looks at Caller ID.)
“Oh no. I’ve got to take this, too. It’s my daughter and…”
God: “I know. Go
ahead.”
Marcy: (Switches over
to the other line) “Hi, what’s wrong?” …. “Because
you’re supposed to be at dance practice for another hour. So
unless you’ve decided to try a
demi-plié while
balancing a cell phone on your shoulder, I’m thinking
something is wrong.” …. “YOU took them! I was blaming
your father! Okay, thanks for letting me know.” …. “What?
I thought Jan’s mother was picking you up.” …. “Okay.
Well, about all I can offer you is a piggy-back ride, cuz
you have my car keys.” …. “Well, what do you want me
to do? As it is, I was supposed to go back to the office
tonight, and I doubt Northwest will turn your Dad’s plane
around for a dance class emergency, so…” …. “I don’t
know, Dear. Call a cab.” …. “Yes ‘as in taxi-cab.’”
…. A taxi-cab would ‘embarrass’ you? More than a
piggy-back ride?” (Pulls phone away from ear and winces,
denoting that daughter is screaming into the phone.)
“I’m sorry, I know this isn’t funny, but… Hello? HELLO?”
(Clicks back over
to other line, very irritated).
“I’m back. Where were we?”
God: “Discovering and
using the spiritual gifts I gave you.”
Marcy: “Right…to help
strengthen your kingdom.” (We hear the sound of other
line beeping in. She does not look at her Caller ID). “Oh,
for pity’s sake!! Please hold on!!” (Furiously
clicks over to other line.)
“Look, I am not on this
earth to be your servant!!! I am a mother, a wife and an
accountant, and I’m doing the best I can to do all
things…terribly. I want to help you, but I simply can’t. Is
that clear? There is nothing I can do for you right
now!!!!!”
God: “Still me.”
Marcy: (Mortified) “Oh
no!! I’m so sorry. Hold on!!” (Starts to click over…)
God: (Gently but
firmly) “Marcy, you said those things to me.”
Marcy: (Confused that
he doesn’t seem to understand what happened) “Yes, but I
didn’t know I was. I thought I had clicked over to
the other line.”
God: “I understand
that, but you’ve been saying the same things to
me…for years.”
Marcy: “No. I (Thinks about it)…I (Realizes)…I
have. I’m so sorry.” (Deflated)
God: “I know you are.”
(We hear the sound of other line beeping in. She looks at
Caller ID.) “I’ll call again.”
Marcy: (Smiles) “Okay.”
God: “Bless you.”
Marcy: “Thank you.
(Smiles) That means a lot coming from you.”
* * * * *
THE SERMON
You see, the question isn’t,
“Is God still speaking?” No, the real question is, “Are we
listening?” Are we listening for the voice of God? Are we
even able to hear the utterances of our Maker? We live in a
world full of noise. Traffic seems to get louder and more
congested each year. Theaters are over-amplified, and
recorded sound fills every store and restaurant. Telephones,
pagers and iPods ring, hum and beep, filling the spaces of
our lives. We are bombarded by advertising. The airwaves are
filled with constant commentary on everything from politics
to gossip, filling the voids in our lives with constant
chatter. There is so much noise that God can hardly get a
word in edgewise. Is it any wonder we have such a hard time
hearing?
Let me make a bit of a
confession. Until very recently in my journey, if you were
to ask me, “Jeff, does God really speak to us?”, if I were
being honest, I would have had to say, “I am not really
sure.” It is a humbling thing for your pastor to have to
admit that for a long time he wasn’t sure how to listen for
God’s voice. Sure, I was good at the whole speaking to
God thing. I could pray at the drop of a hat over a meal,
during a worship service, or at the side of a hospital bed.
I had even gotten better at actually talking to God about my
personal struggles. But letting God speak to me? I wasn’t
sure I knew how to do that. I had forgotten how to listen.
We have this great gift in
our scripture called the Psalms. Right in the middle of our
Bible are 150 prayers. Listen to the words of this ancient
prayer, Psalm 46:
God is our refuge and
strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and
foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose
streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will
not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar,
kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord Almighty is with
us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come and see the works of
the Lord,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the
ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I
am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord Almighty is with
us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
It is all in there.
Everything we would ever hope to hear from our God. The
promise of presence, the assurance of strength, the nudging
in a direction, a sense of purpose, a vision of who we might
become, an invitation to something greater than ourselves, a
sense that we have not been forgotten, and an invitation to
come home are all packed in the first nine verses of this
prayer.
And then we have verse 10.
In it is the key to knowing and experiencing the truth of
the nine verses that precede it. Hear these words again:
“Be still, and know that I
am God.”
Two little words, “Be
still,” are the key to hearing the voice of God. “Be still.”
Sit still long enough and you will know the very presence of
God.
There is no way around it.
If we want to hear God speak to us, we have to make room to
listen. If we were to take a look at our planners, would
there be any time set aside just to be still? For some, it
will be in the morning. For me, the best time is evening. It
might just be shutting the door of your office and turning
off the phones for the first fifteen minutes you’re at work.
For me, it’s taking walks at night….alone…without my iPod!
Whatever works for you, do it. Just make sure you do it. In
our fast-paced world, we must be very intentional about
finding the space to just be still.
Early in my ministry, I was
really struggling. I was cracking under what I felt was
enormous pressure. I started having moments of real anxiety,
worrying that I just wasn’t good enough for the task God had
called me to. I went to see a counselor to help sort out
some of these issues. One thing she kept telling me over and
over was that I needed to learn to listen. I needed to slow
down. I needed to learn to just be. I needed to learn to
meditate.
Meditate! I had come to her
on the verge of a meltdown and that’s all she had for me!
Sit there and do nothing. But she said to try it, so I tried
it. It didn’t work. I would try to sit in silence. But guess
what? It wasn’t silent at all. It was full of noise. It was
a lot like the skit we saw earlier. As soon as I closed my
eyes and just tried to sit still with God, the other lines
of my life kept beeping in:
·
(beep) “Hey, Jeff,
don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning on your way home.”
·
(beep) “Hey Jeff, you
never returned that guy’s phone call. Don’t forget to do
that, all right?”
·
(beep) “Hey, Jeff, I
have an idea for your sermon on the second Sunday of March
in 2019. It will be great!”
·
(beep) “Hey, Jeff,
only 20 million more pennies to go!”
·
(beep) “Hey, Jeff,
maybe you should start Brett Favre this week on your fantasy
football team.”
·
(beep) (beep)
(beep) (beep)
Would I ever be able to shut
off the call waiting long enough to actually hear God speak?
It was then that I realized that if I was ever going to be
able to listen to God, I would have to develop some
spiritual practices to really learn to shut off all the
noise in my life. Here are a couple of things that really
work for me.
The first is reading God’s
Word devotionally. This is not to be confused with Bible
study. Put away the commentaries and study guides. No need
to worry about what the Greek means or what the ancient
Israelites might have thought. This is about letting God
speak to you through scripture. Every Tuesday morning at
8:30, my buddy Mick meets me at my office and we read a
portion of scripture. Currently we are reading 1 John. First
we just ask God to speak to us, and then we read a dozen
verses or so. We then spend about twenty minutes talking and
reflecting about which verses really spoke to us. We each
pick the verse that really stuck with us and we write it
down and put it in our pockets. We carry this word with us
the whole week. My verse last week was 1 John 2:6, “Whoever
claims to remain in him must act as he acted.” Throughout
the week, whenever I was caught or not sure what to do, I
could just pull this verse out of my pocket and it would
help me listen for how God might be calling me to act in
that moment. You can do this alone or with a partner, but
one way to listen for God’s voice is to spend devotional
time with the Word.
A second practice that has
really helped me learn to listen to God is saying short,
repetitive prayers. I recently stumbled across a little book
called The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen. In less
than one hundred pages, I learned more about prayer and
listening for God than I had in my entire life. I highly
recommend this book. You can get it at the church bookstore.
In it, I was introduced to the practice of short, repetitive
prayers. The quiet repetition of a single word or phrase can
help us concentrate and descend into the heart of God. By
simply repeating a short prayer, something like, “Give me
peace” or “Lead me, Lord,” we will slowly begin
to empty out our crowded interior lives, shutting off the
constant intrusions of life’s waiting calls.
For example, a couple of
weeks ago on my prayer walk I found myself feeling
particularly anxious about starting out the new program year
of the church. Let’s face it, this church goes from about 0
mph at the end of August to 120 mph by the first week of
September. That is 0 to 120 in just a matter of days. I was
a bit frantic, worried that I wasn’t prepared. So as I
walked, I just began to say, “The Lord is my shepherd. I
shall not want.” I said it over and over again until the
truth of those words built a little nest for themselves in
my heart. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
Through the quiet repetition of those words, I finally
heard, and felt, God reassuring me that everything would be
all right. Throughout the next week, whenever I felt
overwhelmed, those words would emerge to reassure me that my
life and my work are in the hands of God’s ever-present
guidance.
There is one other
discipline that has been very helpful in learning to listen
to God’s voice. That has been writing. Now, I am not the
kind of guy who journals every day. But when I am really
stuck, I know that by simply putting pen to paper and asking
God to speak to me, I am amazed at what flows out of me.
Whenever I meet someone who seems to really know how to
listen to God’s voice, I always ask them how they are so
attuned to what God might be saying to them. Sally Meese is
one of those people. She always seems to have her finger on
what God is asking of her. When I asked about her prayer
practices, she told me that God speaks to her most clearly
through her journaling. I have asked her to tell us about
how God speaks through writing. What she will read to us
comes straight from her prayer journal:
Journal entry: September
19, 2007
Good Morning, Lord,
Oh, boy! Help! I showed up
in Jeff’s office last week with a big personal dilemma and
the first thing he said to me was, “Sally, have you been
journaling?” Oh, oh. He caught me out immediately. No, I
haven’t been journaling. I put it on hold for the summer. No
wonder I was tied up in knots, going into meltdown with so
much on my plate. Thank you, Lord, that Jeff knows how much
this journaling time has meant to my spiritual life and my
general sanity. But then he asked if I would share a
testimonial at SNA about my journaling as a call
waiting. Well, after that, I couldn’t say no, could I?
How cool. I never thought of
journaling as a type of call waiting. Here you are, always
waiting for me to show up in the early morning in my little
study, waiting for me to pick up my notebook and pen and
take you off call waiting. And there you are, ready to
listen, ready to comfort and advise and reassure. If only I
didn’t keep you waiting for so long sometimes.
How do I explain how a
cheap, spiral bound, college rule notebook and a Bic pen
rescued me out of depression and gave me a ministry? I don’t
know how it works. Wait. Yes I do. It’s about showing up—me
showing up to take you off call waiting to hear your
voice. My friend Shar taught me to start my prayer time
saying, “God, I am here and you are here.” And that’s enough
for it to work.
Thank you, thank you, thank
you for patiently waiting for me to show up and respond to
the quiet, blinking light of my journal.
Love,
Sally
The book of Kings tells this
story of the great Jewish prophet Elijah. Elijah has been
going and going. He is at the end of his rope, consumed with
stress. He is ready to throw in the towel. God says to him,
“Go up on the mountain because I am going to show up.” So
Elijah goes up on this mountain, and this wind comes and
shakes the mountain violently, but God isn’t in the wind.
Then there is this earthquake, but God isn’t in the
earthquake. Then there is this massive fire, but God isn’t
in the fire. Then it is just silent, and that’s when Elijah
finally encounters God.
Is it possible that we have
been searching for God in the winds, the earthquakes and the
fires, while all along God has been waiting to speak to us
in the silence?
“Be still…and you will know
that I am God!” |
