July 7, 2020
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In college, our daughter wrote an award-winning essay about the power of radio. In that essay she wrote, "radio has the power to go through walls and sneak past border guards." That's true. For example, go back a few years to the fall of Communism. Uncle Sam broadcast Free World messages behind the Iron Curtain through an organization called Radio Free Europe. People got to hear truth about the rest of the world they never would have heard otherwise. Of course, the Communist leaders didn't want people hearing the rest of the story, so they would broadcast on the same frequencies, often just trying to drown out the truth with noise.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Jamming Communications."
The Iron Curtain, thank God that is gone, but unfortunately the strategy of drowning out the truth with noise - that's not gone. In fact, Satan has been using that strategy for a long time to keep us from hearing what God has to say. Listen to our word for today from the Word of God. It's just eight little words, but they are words that, for all their simplicity, totally challenge most of our lifestyles. Psalm 46:10 - "Be still and know that I am God." How do you get in touch with the heart of God, with the plans of God, with the perspective of God? Be still. Now the enemy of our soul knows that, so he simply tries to jam God's communications to us by covering them up with a lot of noise.
And it's easy to let it happen in our busy, busy, busy lives. A telephone at home, a telephone at work, a cell phone with us everywhere. a computer and all kinds of stuff coming in on all these devices and technology. We've got communications going on in our car, we've got, Oh man, emails and text messaging. People's voices - our children, our mate, our friends, our coworkers - they're always transmitting to us. We wake up to background sound, we get ready to it, we drive to it, we exercise with it, we relax with it, and we go to sleep with it. And then there's the "quiet noise"...newspapers, magazines, novels, and piles of mail.
We've been raised in such a noisy world that silence actually makes a lot of us uncomfortable. If there isn't background sound, we turn some on fast! And yet God says He is best known in silent times. We have so few. And while Christian radio and TV and music can encourage our growth in Christ, even they can jam what God wants to say to our heart if we keep them going constantly.
As Martha was stressfully running around serving Jesus, He told her that when her sister Mary was doing the most important thing, she was sitting quietly at His feet just listening to Him. That's what we have way too little of. We've got plenty of Martha busyness, but not much Mary quietness do we, just listening to Jesus? As a result, our minds are stressed and our souls are parched.
I wonder if God is saying to you in the midst of the barrenness of a busy life, "Slow down. You're missing Me in all of this because you're not protecting our quiet times." You literally have to fight for those quiet times in a world of noise. You drive without the radio on just so you can listen to your Lord. You leave the TV off, you skip the news. You don't go right to your phone or your computer to check the text. You exercise without the music, you go away if necessary just to be still and know He is God.
Begin by praising Him specifically for His attributes and actions that you've been experiencing, and then listen to Him through extended time in His Word. Pour out your deepest feelings to Him in prayer and listen in your soul for His responses. Keep a notepad handy and write down whatever He seems to be saying during this time when His voice is the only voice you're listening to.
Satan doesn't want you to hear the messages from God's heart to your heart, so he just keeps trying to jam God's communications, drowning out the truth with noise. You cannot afford to miss those messages from God's heart to your heart. So carve out some silence. And in the silence, you can hear heaven.