3MN: God won't try to speak over all the noise in your life.
Happy Thursday!
In the next 3 minutes:
- God won't speak over all the noise in your life.
- Where all humanity's problems stem from according to a 1600s French philosopher.
- Was Jesus an introvert or something beyond?
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Minute 1 - God Won't Speak Up.
My wife recently purchased these loop earplugs that toggle out noise at three distinct levels. The front page of their website invites you to "live life at your volume."
We struggle to hear over the high volume of our world. We miss our kids' subtle cries for help and our friends' invitations into deeper relationships as we run from commitment to commitment on autopilot.
We don't see these things because we don't hear them. And if we cannot hear the people around us, think how hard it is to hear God, who speaks to us in a whisper.
God won't try to speak over all the noise in your life.
He will wait for you to be still.
Minute 2 - All Humanity's Problems Stem From. . .
The power in the following quote comes when you consider the source. Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher who wrote these words in the 1600s (nearly 400 years before social media, smartphones, the internet, and AI.)
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal, 1654.
Minute 3 - Was Jesus An Introvert?
In Luke’s Gospel, he tells us that "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."(Lk. 6:15.) The Greek here can be translated as regularly withdrawing and praying.
Meaning, Jesus frequently felt the need to withdraw to be alone with God.
In fact, Luke records Jesus withdrawing to a solitary place nine times.
Now you might think, Well, I guess Jesus was an introvert. Shout out to my fellow introverts out there.
But I don’t think this pattern in his life says anything about whether Jesus was an extrovert or an introvert. I think it tells us that Jesus knew that to carry out the work the Father had sent him to do, he needed to withdraw in solitude regularly.
This begs the question: If Jesus felt the need to withdraw often, if the Son of God recognized his need to withdraw regularly and be strengthened, doesn’t it make sense that we need solitude?
VERSE OF THE WEEK
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. - 1 Kings 19:11-12
See you next Thursday,
Payton Minzenmayer
P.S. - What in tarnation is "tarnation?"