PSALM 85:8 – Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.
THEME OF THE DAY. CAN WE HEAR HIM? In today’s scripture, the Psalmist is praying. His prayer is one which should be adopted by every child of God. Though penned a very long time ago, it rings with contemporary relevancy as well as personal necessity. In his cry to the Lord, he is asking to be attentive to the Word of God. He cries out of desperation, “Let me hear You”, “Let me be in tune with Your still small voice”, “Let me not miss Your words of peace to my soul.”
Our world is characterized by a lot of evils. We live in fearful times of much sin and the chaos coming from sin. We also live in times of overt attacks on the truth of God’s Word and its claim of exclusivity to be the truth. There is another evil surrounding us, even attacking us in our personal lives. And yes, it is an evil. We may not think of it in such a term, but it is extremely evil. Why? Because this might very well be the number one thing which keeps Christians from an intimate walk with the Lord; a holy walk with the Lord; and an influential walk with the Lord. And it is so deceptive! We would not be quick to call this one thing evil, or sin, but it is for this reason – whatever takes us away from hearing the Lord through His Word is evil and sin. Read through the many times in the Old Testament when God’s people ignored and neglected Him and His Word. He labeled such as “spiritual adultery” and a forsaking of Him. Now none of us would dare confess we do such things to the Lord, but yet, we may stand guilty by allowing one thing to happen in our lives. This one thing, this something that prevents us from hearing the Lord. And this one thing is the sin of busyness.
A busy Christian will be a barren Christian. That doesn’t mean we lack an active life. It does mean that we cannot allow our activity; whatever area it is, become so consuming that we neglect the most important thing in our lives; our hearing the Lord Jesus through unhurried time in His Word and prayer. And to get a real grip on busyness, ponder these synonyms for being busy – “unavailable, buried, overloaded, slaving, snowed, swamped, tied up.” As we think on these terms and see them in our own lives, we get a sense of how dangerous busyness is to the spiritual life. Imagine being so busy in the things of life that we make ourselves unavailable to spend time hearing from the Lord in Word and prayer. Imagine being so buried and overloaded with the cares and pleasures of this world that we are too exhausted to hear from Him. Imagine being enslaved to a rigid schedule, swamped and tied up by too many activities and events that the voices of the world drown out the voice of the Lord. Busyness will ruin a Christian. Busyness will produce a “deaf Christian” unable to hear the Lord. And busyness will produce the opposite of what the Lord promises to those who take time to hear Him – peace.
Fellow Christian, are we hearing from the Lord regularly? Don’t allow busyness, even in good things, drown His voice out. The consequences are severe and the cost to be paid will be a joyless and indifferent Christian life.
PRAYER: “Lord, forgive me when I am too busy in the things of this life to attend to You and the things of the next.”
QUOTE: “Busyness will drain the spirituality from the Christian and leave the soul barren, lacking joy”