Today's Devotional
July 18, 2005
Subject: Hearing God - Whose On The Other End
Deuteronomy 5:24 - "And ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth."
In the military, we often play jokes with peers who are of the same rank. Sometimes we'll call each other and use a fake name with a rank attached. Some of our favorites are General Disorder, Major Confusion or Major Problem. It's always interesting to do because people usually answer their phones in the military with such routine lines that they never hear anything but the rank and almost immediately begin using their "sirs." "Yes sir, no sir, I'll check sir" and everything else. The line to use before you let them in on who is really calling is, "are you standing at the proper position of attention? You better lock your body up right now." Then they usually know that it's someone simply harassing them.
This relates well to God and prayer, because we often have trouble hearing God and I think it's like this phone conversation. We don't put Him in the proper perspective. If we understood His greatness, then our reverence of Him would follow. We would immediately begin to say "yes Sir or no Sir" or "yes Lord and no Lord." Without doing this, we treat communicating with God as an insignificant routine in our day.
The verse above says that God has shown us His great greatness and indeed He has. If we are to hear God's voice, our first step is to realize to whom we are communicating. He's far beyond any General. He is in fact the Great Commander In Chief. This is our great God and while we are doing our routine prayer duty and asking for what we want or for how we want Him to bless us, we need to take time to that "God doth talk with man and he liveth."
Today when you pray, think about whose on the other end and lock your bodies in the proper position of attention otherwise there will be "General Disorder."
Carlen