Jason from Alive

This morning as I was driving into the office I encountered an unexpected detour. I live about 25 miles from the office outside of town. There are a couple of routes that I can take to get in to town. This morning as I was driving in several cars flashed their lights at me. I ignored them. Honestly I did not even notice them until several cars had passed. I must have been distracted, thinking of what needs to be accomplished today. I continued to drive. Another car passed and this time they were pointing the other direction. I continued on, at this point I am pretty committed to the road I have chosen if I turn around it is going to add an extra 10 to 15 miles to my trip. A couple of cars later there is a lady with her window rolled down and she is flashing her lights and hanging out the window pointing and yelling at everyone to turn around. OK, she got my attention, but I still continued to drive. I drove all the way to the point when I was forced to turn around by a Sheriff Deputy. Well, now I have an extra 25 minutes of drive time. As I was driving it occurred to me that what just happened is a perfect example of one of the points from Jeff's teaching that made an impact on a friend this weekend.

After service on Sunday I had lunch with some friends. We were talking about Pastor Jeff's message. The one thing that came up time and time again as we talked it over, was the fact that there will always be distractions. Those distractions keep us from listening to God's voice. As we talked we all agreed that we are always looking for God's voice to be this huge obvious thunder and lightning type of event. One of the verses that jumped out at us was 1 Kings 19:11-12 (NLT). In the verse there is a windstorm, an earthquake and a fire, but God was not in any of them, He was a gentle whisper. Wow, just like my drive this morning I was looking for this huge thing to tell me to turn around. If I had just listened to that first small "whisper", I could have saved myself a lot of time. Instead I went until the final authority made me turn around. Pretty good picture of our lives sometimes. Go down the wrong road, ignore the signs and go until it is so obvious it is time to listen and take action. I love talking it over after a teaching with friends or at life group. Sharing our different perspectives and what each of us got out of the teaching really brings it home. Do you Talk it Over.