Are you listening?

Have you ever noticed how much louder people speak when they are wearing headphones?  We are living in the world of the podcast and headphones have actually become a fashion accessory!  The problem with listening to loud music (whatever your taste) through headphones is that you are cut off from what is going on around you.  Whenever I walk into a music store my kids make a b-line to the headphones on the wall and I always get a laugh out of the fact that I can hear them talking loudly to each other from the other side of the store. See, the problem is, you have to speak louder to compensate because what you have chosen to listen to is affecting your ability to hear anything else. This is why I gave up listening to my ipod whilst riding my pushbike; I could choose some really enjoyable music but what I really need to hear is what is going on around me.  You might not spend a lot of time listening to music but we all select what we will hear.  What we choose to listen to affects what else we will be able to hear.Jesus often said these words… “He who has ears, let Him hear!”  See Jesus understood that listening is an active choice, not simply an automatic response. So my question to you today is… How loudly would God have to speak to get your attention?   Is it possible that He has been speaking but you haven’t been listening?

Conspiracy theory

“It was MI6 that planned the accident…she was becoming a threat to the throne!”

 

I remember the day after Diana Spencer was killed, in a
Paris car crash, being utterly amazed that the guy serving me my hamburger had already heard and latched onto an almost impossibly bizarre conspiracy theory. The definition of a conspiracy theory is that hiding underneath the obvious, currently held belief, is something sinister and dangerous that some powerful group of people are trying to suppress. Conspiracy theories come in all shapes and sizes…Area 51 in
Roswell Texas, JFK’s assassination, the ‘faked’ moon landing of 1969…all of these point to the idea that we really don’t know what is going on.

 

We tend to gravitate towards these theories because we realise that even though we know a lot, we don’t know everything and what we don’t know is uncomfortable and it tends to frighten us a little.    

 

There has been a lot of talk recently and many suggestions of secret codes, hidden meanings, suppressed lies and marvellous intrigue surrounding the person of Jesus.  These stories are filled with terrible deeds and outline the greatest supposed ‘conspiracy’ of all time. Because of this many people start asking questions and start to doubt the established ‘truth’, not realising that the theory they are subscribing to requires greater explanation than the truth they are discarding.

 

I do not have to defend my personal beliefs about Jesus, I would rather simply introduce Him to you.  He is alive and is still well and truly able of speaking for Himself. 

 Have you spoken to Him recently?