Pastor's Corner: Selective Listening

This week's upcoming sermon is going to be about listening to God, and once again, my own boys have managed to capture the essence of our relationship to God.

How often are my boys doing only what they want to be doing, whether it's reading a book, or playing a game, or whatever, and then Big Bad Dad comes in and ruins all their fun by asking them to accomplish some task? Usually something they've already been asked to do before. But there's one sure-fire way to get out of it: Selective Listening.

Selective Listening means that you only respond when you want to respond, and that you hear only the things you want to hear. Extremely frustrating as a parent, especially a task-oriented one, because you feel ignored.

But how often is this the case with us and God? How often is he asking us to do something, or to be something, and we simply can't hear it because we don't want to hear it? Or because there was too much going on around us for us to concentrate on what really matters? In a few days, Cornerstone will be headed into our annual All-Church Fast. And my prayer is that we will learn how to remove those distractions, and really listen. And not only listen, but then get up and do what God us telling us to do, or go where he is telling us to go.