LISTENING TO WHAT?

Christians are repeatedly told to “Listen to what the Spirit is saying.” (Revelation chapters 2 and 3) Is that what we are doing? What are we listening to? The president, the Democrats, the Republicans, CBS, Fox news, Sportscasters, Oprah, Limbaugh, ad infinitem? Henry David Thoreau said: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.” The questions we need to be asking ourselves – that is, if we can turn off our cell phones, TVs, Ipods long enough to find the time and have the courage to ask – is: “Whose drumbeat am I marching to? Am I keeping pace with all the lies and deceit of our decadent culture, or with the self-denying, risen Christ?” It is impossible to keep pace with them both. Let us choose to march to the drumbeat of the Holy Spirit whose only agenda is to draw us closer to God. Robert Frost’s poem The Road Less Taken suggests that we take the road less traveled, because that is where the Spirit leads. Jesus calls you to hear Him and to follow Him with the few in the narrow way that leads to life (Mt 6:13-14).

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