They say (whoever “they” are) that hindsight is always 20-20. As I sat down to write this, my mind went back to a church I pastored. I noticed a glaring issue with the bulletin; the back page was blank. I was told that it was blank so people could take notes. I thought this would not do, and I created Words to Live By. It was short writing (blog) of thoughts taken from a scripture verse.
A hundred years (not literally) later, I realized that the blank page on the bulletin was the start of my weekly blogs. I write about having a close personal relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, which I call the godhead.
You may or may not know that I am not a fan of the matrix (what I call the traditional church). In principle, it is fundamentally sound, and by design, it represents the Old Testament church in the wilderness. However, in practice, (not always) represents a religious institution that promotes form and familiarity over a close personal relationship.
That being said, I am not against the matrix; my family and I attend a fellowship. I am, however, aware of the form and familiarity that is present. I am so convicted that I have a manuscript (that may or may not ever be published) devoted to explaining the difference between the Old Testament church in the wilderness and the New Testament church founded by the apostles.
While in the matrix, the previous discourse was called a rabbit trail, meaning I took the long route to get to the point.
Here is the point
The Old Testament book of Proverbs is my life book. I read it daily and have done so for many years. Written in King Solomon’s words (for the most part) are valuable life lessons that include a close personal relationship with the godhead. For the next season of time, the blog will resemble Words to live By in that I will be taking portions of scripture—primarily Proverbs—and expounding on them. I trust it will be enjoyable.
Unless otherwise noted, the biblical references will be taken from The Message Bible.
Dear friend, listen well to my words;
tune your ears to my voice.
Keep my message in plain view at all times.
Concentrate! Learn it by heart!
Those who discover these words live, really live;
body and soul, they’re bursting with health.
Proverbs 4:21-22
Tune your ears to my voice
Back in the day of transistor radios, you had a dial that you manually turned until you landed on your station. In my time, it was WQAM. It played the hottest hits of the day.
A close personal relationship with the godhead starts with tuning your ears to hear His voice. God talks to us. It isn’t that he is a chatty-Cathy (Do you know the type?) always talking and never stopping to take a breath, but he does speak to us.
Tuning your ears to hear his voice means taking time to manually (as it were) turn the dial in your mind to find your station—WGodsvoice! This takes time and is why I used the manual turning of the dial. The imagery depicts the desire on your part to find the station and your willingness to do what it takes to find it.
Be patient with yourself
We live in a very LOUD world. My wife and I used to sit on our front porch and catch up with things going on in our lives. Frequently we would have to pause as some loud vehicle rumbled down the road. Remember that you have an adversary dead-set on stopping you. This is very true of tuning your ears to hear the voice of God. Do not be surprised when loud vehicles rumble down the road as you tune your ears to hear God.
There is no set time for how long it will take you to find your station. This is a matter of your heart. The more clutter, the more determined you must be to push beyond it. There is an old sales adage that says persistence wears down resistance. (Using our analogy) Put your hand on the dial and turn until you find “your” station.