Staying Connected

Psalm 91:15  He shall call upon me, and I will answer him .  .  .

Can you hear me God?  Can you hear me now?  Isn’t that how we sometimes feel when trying to talk to God?  I know when my life is full of distractions, that is exactly how it feels.  And yet God makes communicating with him easy. But why does it sometimes feel like I just can’t get a connection?

Modern technology is such an amazing thing.  The fact that we can basically stay connected with the world pretty much 24/7,  anytime, anywhere still blows my mind.  Even in pretty remote spots such as while camping or up in the mountains, as long as you can still get a signal, you’re in good shape.  To me, this is a good thing and yet it can be a bad thing.

I recently attended a women’s conference and the speaker was talking about shutting out everything else so we could use the day for reflection and to hear what God wanted us to hear.  While she was saying those very words, my cell phone went off.  I had forgotten to turn it off and embarrassingly scrambled to find it.  The kind speaker immediately chuckled and said, yes by being free from all distractions and doing things like turning our cell phones off.  By this time my phone had quit ringing.  I thought I had pushed the button for silent mode when to my mortification it rang again.  Ah, I quickly pushed the power off button and at this point wanted to crawl under my seat.  I shook my head in embarrassment and said, ok God, ok I got it, it’s off!

This was a great reminder to me and a perfect illustration, that in order to stay connected to God we sometimes need to do just what this speaker said, to power things off and get away from all the distractions.  Unlike staying connected to the world by carrying our phones around with us constantly, we need to do the opposite to stay connected to God, we need no interruptions and no distractions.  Communication with God and time in his word is the only way we will ever grow in our relationship with him.  This is the only way get to know who God truly is and know what he desires for each us.  Without this daily interaction with God, we will remain spiritually immature and disconnected.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit we have direct access to the father (Ephesians 2:18).  We can talk  to him anytime and anywhere, but to hear from God, we usually need this time away from all distractions.  Using Jesus’ example he too had to get away from everything to go to talk to his father.  He would intentionally leave behind all his followers and go away somewhere quiet without distractions to pray and to hear from his father.  Matthew 6:6 says . . . But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

What a divine privilege we have as a child of God to have direct communion with out heavenly father.  To know that God not only hears us but delights in us and our requests.  This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 1 John 5:14 Therefore, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16  

Daily communion with God is the only way to have a clear connection to Him in a noisy world!