SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
The
Lure Of A Message
Read: 1 Samuel 3:1-10
Speak, for Your servant
hears. —1 Samuel 3:10
You’re
sitting in a darkened theater enjoying a concert, a play,
or a film, when
suddenly a smartphone screen lights up as a
person reads an incoming text and
perhaps takes time to reply.
In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is
Doing to Our
Brains, Nicholas Carr says that in our connected world, “The
sense
that there might be a message out there for us” is
increasingly difficult to
resist.
Samuel
was a young boy when he heard a voice call his name
and thought it was Eli the
priest in the tabernacle where he
served the Lord (1 Sam. 3:1-7). When Eli
realized that God
was calling Samuel, he told the boy how to respond. When God
called his name a fourth time, “Samuel answered, ‘Speak, for
Your servant
hears’” (v.10). This attentiveness to God’s voice
became the pattern of
Samuel’s life as “the Lord revealed
Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of
the Lord” (v.21).
Are
we listening for God’s voice in our lives today? Are we
more drawn by the
vibration of a smartphone than the still,
small voice of the Lord through His
Word and His Spirit?
May
we, like Samuel, learn to discern God’s voice and say,
“Speak, Lord. I’m
listening.”
May we listen,
Lord, to You
As You speak to us
today
Through Your Spirit
and Your Word—
Help us follow and
obey. —Sper
Don’t let the noise of
the world keep you from hearing
the voice of the Lord.
Source:
Our Daily Bread 2012
