Rick's 5 Minutes

I remember the first time I tried to sit still for 5 minutes and just “listen to God”. I was thinking, this is going to be a piece of cake. My anticipation grew as morning approached, eagerly waiting on the vast wisdom God would share with me in such a brief moment in time. I’ll never forget what I found. Anything but silence or a still small voice. I couldn’t keep my mind from racing here and there. I was like a child running up and down the cereal aisle in the grocery story. It’s almost like the boxes of Coco Coco Puffs and Lucky Charms where screaming at me “pick me, pick me”. Stuff clamoring for my attention, random thoughts, ideas, to do lists….everything but the silent meditation on God’s voice seemed to be coming at me.

Whether this was a remnant of childhood ADD stashed away in my cells, or just the pattern of my busy life surfacing, it was clearly ruining any attempt to allow silence and contemplation. Years later, it’s still not easy to sit quietly and just listen.

I remember daydreaming once that it would be awesome to have a set of Godly noise canceling headphones that I put on once or twice a day. Maybe I would hear God’s voice say something like “you are now free to move about My kingdom”. This verse (and verse 1 just above it) help shed light on this struggle.

Isaiah 55:3a (NLT)
3 “Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life…”
Sounds easy right? Listen, and you and I will find life. If like me, you have found that other things seem to occupy your mind during every waking moment, listen to what the Prophet Isaiah says in verse 1:

Isaiah 55:1a (NIV)
1 "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!....”

While serving in the Army back in the 80’s, I recall a time we were stationed in the middle of the dessert doing some training for a couple of weeks. It was extremely hot every day, reaching 115-120 well before mid-day. Growing up in the south, I was fairly adapted to high temperatures and its effects on the body. But until that moment, I had never really experienced thirst. The kind that makes your tongue swell up and you can’t speak a clear word to save your life. Where you see water everywhere you look (at least in your mind), and even imagine how one sip from a lukewarm canteen could sustain you another mile. Just a sip. It was here that I fell in love with water and what it meant to my life. I cherished every possible moment to keep my canteens full from that day forward. I never wanted to face another day when water was that far away from me.

Maybe that is what God is saying through Isaiah in verse 1. For verse 3 to be possible, there is one pre-requisite to hearing his voice and taking part in this feast. Even though it is open to everyone who walks the face of the earth, one thing must be present. Thirst.
If a little lights is coming on for you as it did for me, you realize why it is so hard to just sit quietly and listen to God. We have to find our thirst for God’s voice. A thirst for something beyond ourself. A thirst beyond what the world has to offer. A thirst that goes beyond the meager satisfaction found in living a "good life".

So what does that look like for Rick? It’s me getting to the place that I’m thirsty enough to turn off my TV, cell phone, laptop, PS3, radio (and the list goes on). Even if it is for 5 minutes sitting on the couch in a dark living room, or sipping a cup of coffee as I stare into the back yard…. to find a spot and sit quietly and say “God, my ears are open. Do you have something you want me to hear today?” If I spend all my time quenching my thirst with everything I’m exposed to throughout the day, I leave little room for the real thirst for God to surface. And yet, God tells us, do this…. “and you will find life.”

I would love to hear what works for you. Do you have a special place you go to hear him clearly? I’ve shared some of the things that get in the way of me hearing Him from time to time. What sort of things stand in the way of your thirst?