The Fruit of Listening

     I am more convinced than ever that our culture is not being transformed because God's people have lost intimacy with Him and the listening to Him that nurtures that intimacy  (and the fruit it brings). Instead of fixing the eyes of our heart on Papa, we instead live our lives almost entirely with sights set on our own plans and at our own initiative. When we make the shift to a listening lifestyle, however, incredible things happen in us and through us. Consider a couple of stories.     This past week my friend Ken, who is a listener extraordinaire, was waiting for his connection in Chicago when he "noticed" a lady who was reading The Shack. His careful listening (to Papa God and to the woman) led him into a two hour conversation with a woman who initially had no interest in God. The conversation ended with Ken being able to encourage this woman towards God via reading The Shack and with his promise to pray for her as she did. This kind of God-incidence happens all the time for Ken. Another story that comes to mind is also a travel story. Someone I know was on a flight from Burbank to Dallas and heard God tell him that a certain lady coming down the aisle would be receiving God's touch through him. Sure enough the lady sat down next to him. When he asked Papa how to enter a conversation with her, He said, "Ask her to tell you her story." When he did so, this young woman, an actress and acting coach, poured out her pain, explaining that she was on her way home to see her estranged father who had just suffered a major stroke. She was typically suspicious of "Christians," but because of his listening to her and to God, by the time the plane was descending for landing he asked her if he could pray for her, and she literally leaned into him, head to head, as she said "Yes!" She then walked to her gate clinging to him, left him her contact information, etc. I could add many, many stories like this story because to me is the "normal Christian life" and there are many stories to tell.
     But how many of us have a relationship with Papa that is intimate enough to allow us to live like this most of the time? How many of us instead live most of life almost entirely on our own initiative, with little thought or reference to engaging God in an ongoing conversation about things as we go through the day? And what kind of fruit does that bear? Help us, Papa! (Yes, I still wrestle with how to live this way, too!)
     I close with this poignant and parallel thought from Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion (pp. 96-97). I have updated the language slightly.
     "the sense of (God's) Presence carries within it a sense of our lives being in large part guided, dynamically moved from beyond our usual selves. Instead of being the active, hurrying church worker and anxious, careful planner of shrewd moves toward the good life, we become pliant creatures, less brittle, less obstinately rational. The energizing, dynamic center is not in us but in the Divine Presence in which we share....The sooner we stop thinking we are the energetic operators of religion and discover that God is at work, as the Aggressor, the Invader, the Initiator, so much the sooner do we discover that our task is to call men to be still and know, listen, hearken in quiet invitation to the subtle promptings of the Divine....too many people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don't hear Him asking that He might do something through them."
      That's it for now. I could write much more, describing many instances of incredible fruitfulness for those who have learned to listen, but perhaps you can add your own stories. For me, my life is one continuing story like this! I can never go back to living on my own initiative!

Listening and living loved so that I may love others as I live,

Tom, one of Abba's beloved children