Many years ago a friend told me that outside of Jesus I had no value and, in fact, that Jesus didn't die on the cross because I had value but instead because Jesus died on the cross I had value. One additional word changed my entire Christian life. I remember telling my friend he was wrong and walked out of the Sunday school class he was leading.
At the time I had roughly a 90 minute commute to and from work. The Monday after my friend's statement I decided I was going to have it out God. The only 'free' time I had was while I was in the car. However, my car, and my mind, was filled with talk radio and commercials. I decided that instead of being entertained during my drive, let me listen to what God was trying to tell me.
For the next 6 months I drove back and forth to work in a silent car. I couldn't understand that I didn't have anything to offer to God and that my value was created by and comes from him alone. Honestly, it ticked me off and made me feel worthless and frustrated. So I asked God over and over and over how this could be true?
I will never forget the moment when God finally got me to understand. I was on Pond Avenue in Brookline, MA. Six months I had been fighting and God finally got through to me. What I thought was horrible to think of became completely freeing. There was nothing I could do to make God love me less, or more! All my good works, without God, were really just works. God didn't love me anymore because of them. Sure, good things resulted, but God didn't require me meeting some performance benchmark for him to love me. At that point, for the first time, I understood more about God than I had ever before.
I write this today because as Bob Flayhart, the pastor at my church, spoke about being quiet to hear God speak. So I am repeating the exercise I did nearly 15 years ago to hear what God is saying to me.
I am not doing this because I have lost my way. I still love God, I still put him first in the big things in life, but I am not sure I am in love with God anymore and I definitely hold back so much from him. I know how I got here - it is called life and Satan used the busyness of life to slowly and steadily walk me away from God. Why I am here is the question that needs to be answered.
So today is day 1 of driving in a car without having the radio on. It was hard. I kept wanting to put it on. My mind was all over the place with different thoughts. My thoughts, God's thoughts, useless thoughts? I don't know what I was thinking about, but there were thoughts.
I am looking forward to what God wants to say and I know that with time I will be able to quiet my mind and listen.
