Down in the history books
Tonight was our first ever official UnderCurrent and I have to say it went quite well. There were 4 of us and we had a good discussion around the Nooma video "Noise". We are going to be watching these videos for the next 11 weeks and it's going to be a good time.
We talked about how hard it is for us to be silent. We have a tendency to want to make excuses as to why we don't need to be silent but in the end, it's a discipline and we need to learn how to stop what we're doing and shut up. It is possible to hear God in the noise...however, if you've never heard the voice of God before and you've never taken the time to be silent, it's quite possible that you won't hear Him because you don't know what to listen for. It takes the practice of hearing God in the silence to be able to hear him in the noise.
We came to the realization that a lot of us are scared to hear the voice of God because we want to be in control of our lives. What if God tells us something that we don't want to hear? What if he hijacks our lives and ships us off to somewhere remote, never to see civilization again? What if he tells me to stop the one thing that I really love doing? And we get into this messed up place of thinking that God hates us and doesn't want the best for our lives. Of course, sometimes the best looks like the worst to us but again, we can't see the bigger picture like God can. We think that just because we're passionate about something that God is gonna take it away because "it's competing with him". This may happen...I can't say. But what I can say is that God puts passions in us. They aren't from the Devil (unless they are completely against what God says in His Word).
So we can stop. We can listen. We can be. And know that God loves us just as we are:broken, messed up and lost...but he still loves us. We don't have to perform for him. We can hear his voice telling us that it's okay and that he loves us. We can hear his voice in the silence. Turn off the noise.
Listen.
We talked about how hard it is for us to be silent. We have a tendency to want to make excuses as to why we don't need to be silent but in the end, it's a discipline and we need to learn how to stop what we're doing and shut up. It is possible to hear God in the noise...however, if you've never heard the voice of God before and you've never taken the time to be silent, it's quite possible that you won't hear Him because you don't know what to listen for. It takes the practice of hearing God in the silence to be able to hear him in the noise.
We came to the realization that a lot of us are scared to hear the voice of God because we want to be in control of our lives. What if God tells us something that we don't want to hear? What if he hijacks our lives and ships us off to somewhere remote, never to see civilization again? What if he tells me to stop the one thing that I really love doing? And we get into this messed up place of thinking that God hates us and doesn't want the best for our lives. Of course, sometimes the best looks like the worst to us but again, we can't see the bigger picture like God can. We think that just because we're passionate about something that God is gonna take it away because "it's competing with him". This may happen...I can't say. But what I can say is that God puts passions in us. They aren't from the Devil (unless they are completely against what God says in His Word).
So we can stop. We can listen. We can be. And know that God loves us just as we are:broken, messed up and lost...but he still loves us. We don't have to perform for him. We can hear his voice telling us that it's okay and that he loves us. We can hear his voice in the silence. Turn off the noise.
Listen.
