God trades in far different currency than we think.  He needs nothing from us but desires a great deal for us.  Becaue He will get His plan finished with or without us, He does not need us to do something for Him, but because He is the perfect Father He wants us to do everything with Him.  His currency is far more relationship and making us like Him, than it is unmet expectations and frustration.

Jesus makes an interesting compare and contrast statement in John Chapter 3.  He says something like this…”I did not come into the world to judge it…the world is already in the state it is in…I came to be light in darkness.”

He then moves from talking about the world to talking about you and I.

“Those who do evil,” He says, “hate the light because the they do not want to be exposed.  But those who do the truth come to the light so that what comes out of them would come from God.”  (my translation).

Notice when Jesus talks about the opposite of evil in the lives of men, He does not say that good is the opposite of evil.  He says that truth is the opposite of evil.  Again, our knowledge of good and evil has always been the problem, not the solution.  Jesus says the there is only One who is good.  In the human experience the opposite of evil, is our willingness to come to the Light.  Light that comes from God, does not just reveal, it transforms.

Step into the light, He shows us what is not Him, so that from that day forward what issues forth from our lives comes from Him in us, not from us-trying-to-impress-Him.  Truth, real, soul-bearing truth can be difficult, but all it really does is reveals the difficulty we are already living in so we can be freed from it.

Step into the light.  C’mon in, don’t be afraid.

I have a friend who hears symphonies.  Seventy part symphonies.  Each part comes to him in detail.  He can’t write them but he can reproduce each part on a piano while others transcribe what he hears.  Sometimes when he thinks he finds himself in a circular maze, seemingly with no way out.

When my body is busy but my mind is not, ideas come often without invitation.  They just show up.  Many of them are pretty good ideas.  What I write about here, what I teach in my classes, strategies for changing people’s lives, and a number of things no one else has seen or heard yet, all seem to come to me when I am still enough to hear.  They just gently introduce themselves into my mind.  They are fascinating to me, and exciting.  They change me and feed me.

Often when I try to think of ideas, nothing comes, or what does come has much less zing to it. I can even end up in what I have come to call the “dead-end maze of my own mind”; circular, almost obsessive, usually meaningless thoughts.

“Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind… in the air… in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.”  says the voice of Freddie Sizemore.  The movie “August Rush” begins with this simple quote and unfolds into a stirring story of a musical prodigy.  When asked later in the movie where he comes up with his music, he looks upward and indicates “I hear it”.

The great things in our lives come to us, not from us.  We are designed to be receivers of something much bigger than ourselves.  Built into our souls is the ability to connect to greatness, in fact eternity itself.  Continue to receive and the possibilities are endless.  Start to take credit, or believe that we are the source, eventually it will dry up, or even become harmful to us.  I have a friend who asks the question, “how much can God bless you before you start to use it against Him?”

One more example; sitting across from people who are stuck, I always urge them to stop and listen.  Once we identify the right questions we stop and listen.  Almost every one of them starts by thinking.  I can see it.  They remain stuck, their frustration grows as they repeat the answer they have been trying to apply.  When I help them listen instead of think, everything changes.  New ways of thinking and seeing come to them.

Listen…can you hear it?  The Voice of God is all around us.  It’s alive and it’s active.  It will get into our hearts and sort out those thoughts and motives which are destructive to us.  If we open ourselves to it, it will change us.  If we fight it, or mistake our own thoughts for the Voice, we can have a life of wrestling.

Sometimes our hearer has been affected by life or even biology.  Sometimes we hear confusion, or a clamor of voices whether literally or figuratively.  Listening becomes frightening of confusing.  If this is you the task is a bit different.  In the clamor, you must learn to focus on the Voice among the voices.   The Voice will silence the voices and begin to restore your soul.  It will sound like a loving Father, and as you pick His Voice out of the cacophony He will lead you to a quiet place and help you to become still.  Among the many reasons God gave us the Bible is to help us recognize His voice among all the others.

You may not hear symphonies and songs like my friend.  You may not hear ideas, like I do.  But you may hear the cure to a disease, the solution to a major world issue, or a world changing invention.  You may also hear the exact word your child needs to hear in any given moment.  You might hear the thing that brings you peace in the middle of todays’ storm, or the way out of this years struggles.  Are you thinking, or hearing?  You can tell by the impact it has on your moment and your life.  Listen.