Taking My Own Advice

Well, this blog certainly (for the most part at least) has turned out to be mostly my own journal read

by a few people instead of the daily blog I once hoped for. I'm afraid I'm quite too undisciplined to keep this up anymore than I have. For that, I am sorry. Hopefully, for those of you who do still keep up with my sporadic posts, you are blessed by them. However, I'm afraid that today isn't really much of a post either, but more of a journal entry. 

You may have read my previous post entitled "The Forgotten Act of Being Still." In that post, I basically wrote about how we often (often as is basically always) forget to turn to God in our distresses. We seek guidance from our friends, parents, boy/girlfriends, facebook, or even our pastors (or other Godly men). We turn to everyone and everything except the One who actually has the answer. I wrote about how we need to seek God for guidance. That doesn't just mean forcing yourself to sit down for 5 minutes out of your crammed busy day to read your Bible and then go on with your day hoping that will help somehow. Think about it for a second. Is that what you do with your friends? How would that look?

"Hey Sam, I could really use your advice on something, so I'm going to sit down on my couch really quick in between a chat on facebook and a physics test to read a paragraph of a letter you wrote me once. I doubt it will help me at all, but my pastor told me it would help so here I am. I was right. That didn't help at all. I knew it. Time for that physics test."

See what I mean? When you ask for advice from a friend what do you do (hopefully)? It's pretty simple. It only includes two very very very simple steps. 

1. Ask for advice (this one is pretty easy to remember).

2. LISTEN!!! 

Why do we NEVER do this (I am speaking of myself). If you want an answer, you aren't going to get it by continually asking. And even if you take time to listen (rare), you aren't going to get it by expecting not to hear it. That's not true listening. That's asking God for advice and then plugging your ears in case he answers you. 

Anyway, I guess you could have just read the post about being still, but there it is again. All this to set up a very simple post about a real life example. But before I give the real life example, you need to realize something. Real life isn't like the books. It's not like the movies. And it's not like the testimonies you hear in church (at least extremely rarely). That's what makes those stories so interesting. It's like the news. You never hear a breaking new story about a family who treated each other nicely for an entire week. That's boring. Well, I'm afraid my story may be boring as well.

But you see...a miracle happened this past week. I took my own advice. I'm dealing with questions of my own and have been going everywhere to find an answer. Parents, friends, little irish gnomes at the ends of rainbows. Everywhere except God. So I tried going to God. That consisted of a ten second prayer as I tried to keep from falling asleep. I tried reading my Bible (maybe 5 minutes worth at a break i had during the day). So this week I finally put my foot down, and decided I needed more. 

So, I bought a bag of gummy bears and a vitamin water and walked to a nearby park with nothing but my bible (and the gummy bears and drink of course). For about 15 minutes or so I did nothing. I just sat there in the grass under the tree (yes...california does have grass and trees) and listened. I heard a lot of things. Birds, an annoying crow, a dog from a nearby house who though I was intruding, traffic, fire trucks. Just about everything except for the voice of God saying, "Hello James. Would you like to know the answer to all your problems?" So after about 15 minutes of listening, I read my Bible for another 30 or so. 

The next day I did the same thing, heard the same things, and didn't hear the same things. Today, I did the same thing, heard the same things, and didn't hear the same things. And as I walked back to my room and got on my computer, I came to a conclusion which is not a novel one. In fact, I've written about it before (you can read about it here). The conclusion is this (copy/pasted from the previous blog).

Maybe God doesn't need to start "lighting my path." Maybe he lit it before the foundations of the world. Maybe what i choose to do doesn't really matter. Maybe I'm just supposed to focus of loving and getting closer to Him. After all...what could be more important than that? Maybe I don't need to keep asking if I'm "supposed to be here." I KNOW I'm supposed to love. So I'm just gonna focus on that.

As for my future. I'm just gonna stay the course and let God shut and open doors as He wills.

You see, in my reading and listening at the park, God spoke not a word regarding my question. But he did speak through his word and through the silence in so many other points. In my most recent readings of the Bible he has taught me humility. A word which my dad has instilled in me, and which I believe is vital unlike nearly every other word (except love perhaps) to the Christian walk. 

So, I took my own advice and sought silence, stillness, and the Word of God. And now I am taking my own advice again and letting God take the reigns. I will concern myself only with my dad's favorite verse (at least I'm 99% sure it is). That verse it Micah 6:8, and it says this:

"He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?"