Good Monday morning! It’s sofa day at the Potter’s house! Margie has made her final choice on a sofa (it also passed my test as I feel confident I can take a mean nap on it!) And so today between 9am and 1pm our new sofas will arrive. Yes, I said sofas. We are setting up our living area as a traditional “conversation pit” with 2 identical sofas facing each other. Our prayer is to be hosting many home groups in this house that God has given us, and we feel this arrangement is conducive to close, personal conversations. By the way, God heard our prayers and we’ll be starting our first home group in September and be covering The Whisper by Mark Batterson, more on that later.
Also, we’re trying something that is absolutely crazy in today’s world…we will have no TV in our living room. It’s conversation, reading or quiet time. This will be another new adventure for us. We always had a big TV as the center of the living room and we would always plop down on the couch at night and automatically turn on the TV and then just stare at its offering. We’ve lived without a TV in the L.R. for a few months now & it’s been great. We talk much more, read much more and have found more inspirational things to fill our minds with. I’ll let you know how it REALLY goes as football season starts…ha!
Now, back to the home group & the book The Whisper, How to Hear the Voice of God by Mark Batterson. Our church, Southcliff, will be covering this book in the fall and a few groups will be home groups. (Ours being one) I got a copy of the book last week and am about a third through. It’s hit me right in the heart as this is exactly where I’m at right now, learning to accurately hear & discern God’s voice for wisdom and direction in our lives. I’d like to share one quick thought from the book that I think relates closely to the 5MC and what it takes to be successful in spending 5 minutes in God’s Word every day for 30 days.
Question…if you were to schedule a lunch with a friend this week would you confirm a time and place to meet? Of course you would. Another question. If I said you could meet with anybody on the planet who would it be? The CEO of Apple? A great politician or world leader? A great man or woman of God? A famous celebrity? In order to not just ‘meet’ this person but to REALLY get to know them, you’re going to be able to meet with them EVERYDAY FOR 30 DAYS IN A ROW! Think of that, these great men and women of the world would graciously allow you a huge chunk of their highly valuable and irreplaceable time all just to get to know you. You see where I’m going with this right? You have the opportunity to spend time with the God of all creation everyday for 30 days, all you have to do is schedule a time and a place and then show up. Your ‘Whisper Spot’, or where you meet God, can be anywhere and the time can be anytime, it’s your choice. Couple this together with the 5 minute challenge and it’s game on. Find your ‘whisper spot’, open up God’s Word, be still, and simply listen to God speak. God wants to spend time with you…everyday.
My ‘whisper spot’ is in our new dining room. It has a view of our courtyard that’s full of beautiful, bright green plants. It has views out the living room windows of the sun as it rises to welcome in a new day. I meet God here every morning and it’s here this morning that I continue reading His Word in the book of John. God spoke to me this morning about understanding.
One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” I read this morning of the ongoing struggle between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders of the day. Jesus is trying to get them to see the Truth of who He is and why He came. The leaders are just not understanding. We as sinful humans have a really bad habit of leaning on our own understanding. If I don’t understand it, can it really be true?
It makes me think of the old philosophical statement about the tree falling in the forest with nobody around. Does it make a sound? Let’s spin that around. If something is true but you don’t understand it, is it still true? Let me repeat that a different way….if something is impossible for me to understand can it still be true & trustworthy to me? This is what Jesus was up against with the Jewish leaders in this morning’s reading even going so far in verse 8:43 to say, “why do you not understand what I say? You cannot bear to hear my word.” There has been more times in my life than I care to admit to, that I have witnessed or heard a truth that I simply did not want to admit was true. Mostly it had to do with a personal shortcoming or sin issue. It was absolutely true but I didn’t want to admit to it or deal with it. I was leaning on my own understanding or as 8:43 says, I could not bear to hear His words.
When I was in college I was what you would call a ‘really, really, really bad math student.’ I started College Algebra twice and dropped it both times. Math never made sense to me. (I eventually buckled down and finished not only algebra but my additional 3 semesters of trig and calculus…ahhhh it was so hard!) Just when I thought I was ‘getting it’ the professor would bust out with some new theorem or equation and it would blow my mind. He was telling me this was an absolute truth in the world of math, but I didn’t understand it and I didn’t know it was true because I couldn’t explain it with the knowledge I had at that moment. So how did I know it was true? I didn’t. I trusted. I had faith. I believed that the teacher knew more than me and he would teach me the truth about math.
Jesus is our teacher. He knows more than us and He will teach us about the Truth of life. He is the Light of the World, the great I Am, the Messiah, our redeemer and our Savior. He is the Way, the truth and the Life. He holds life in His hands and He is the one that understands all. Our task? Accept that everything He tells us is the Truth. Accept that He loves us more than we can ever understand. Accept that He died on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins. Accept the Truth of who He is, no matter how hard it is for us to comprehend it with our own minds.
Lean not on your own understanding.
I hope you find time for God’s Word, today, tomorrow and the day after. Blessings to you all. I’ve got to go move some sofas.
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