*Chad Jarnagin

If we step back from this busy life for a moment of reflection, we will start to hear a deafening silence. The ironic thing will be that it is truly the still silence that is so deafening. Everyone in my circles struggle with noisy, crazy, hectic schedules, running from meeting to meeting, coffee to coffee, and service to service.

After you read this JUST TRY to take 5 minutes and sit in silent solitude. This might be hard iPhoners… NO calls, NO texting, NO computer (AIM, Facebook, Twitter, etc), NO music, NO Xbox 360, NO talking. Nothing, but silence. If you haven’t experienced this in awhile, the sound will be loud. You’ll see what I mean.

If you have not seen the Nooma video “Noise”, go check it out. In the book Facedown (Matt Redman), Bill Hybels (WillowCreek) asked, “Is the ambient noise level of my life low enough for me to hear the whispers of the Lord?” A. W. Tozer has said “in some instances, absolute silence might well become our greatest act of worship”. The silence Tozer is talking about doesn’t happen in our worship services. Everything in our culture is screaming at a db level that is dulling our hearing the Creator’s voice, and sometimes His will. I myself continue to struggle with this.

CHURCH LEADERS: When our people come into worship on Sunday, let’s try to remember that life is fast and loud. It can be voluntary or involuntary, but our communities are fast and loud places. If we are living there as well, how can we lead them into the Holy place? When I come into church I NEED the music peeps to help lead me to a place of silencing & yielding my world in order to seek God in everything.

I think we know that God is everywhere AND in everything, but how often do we live acknowledging that? We usually let our little worlds dictate our response to the Almighty. In order to effectively lead people into worship of God, we must be clear to hear where He is leading us. We can’t always be on point with our leadership, let’s keep it real. I stink it up more times than not, but we should step up our game b/c we have a responsibility.

Application of a TRUE “quiet time” or “silent time” is the only means of execution here. He WILL be in the secret silent place. It probably looks different for everyone. I hope to find more frequent time and space to seek, sense, and listen for more of His heart in the middle of my crazy, whack, funky life.

Shalom.

With the upcoming election in mind… “God is not very concerned with the method by which rulers come to power; He is passionately and compassionately concerned with what they do once they attain power.”-N.T. Wright 

“Man can’t do without God. Just like you’re thirsty, you have to drink water. You just can’t go without God.” -Marley 

“When a human being is mistreated, objectified, or neglected, when they are treated as less than human, these actions are actions against God. Because how you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the Creator. To be a Christian is to work for the new humanity. Jesus commands his followers to feed and clothe and visit, and take care of those who need it. They’re fellow image-bearers, they’re just like us, and when we love them, we’re loving God. A church exists to be a display of the new humanity. A community of people who honor and respect the poor and rich and educated and uneducated and Jews and Gentile and black and white and old and young and powerful and helpless as fully human, created in the image of God.” -Rob Bell (Sex God)

LONDON-University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind’s makeup.

“There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?” said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

“One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation,” he said.

The study will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization that funds wide-ranging research into questions that deal with the laws of nature and issues of spirituality. 

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders and interfering with God’s work within us”. A.W. Tozer