God Always Speaks To Us
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." - Peter Drucker
Moses approached the burning bush and saw that it was on fire, but it was not being consumed. As he came closer a voice spoke up and told him something peculiar, "Remove the sandals from your feet for the ground you are standing on is holy" (Exodus 3:5).
As a kid hearing this story, I remember being a little confused. God can speak to a man through a bush that is on fire, but not being burned up, but he needs Moses to take his shoes off to be able to communicate fully. My parents ran a "no shoes in the house," household and I remember the times I'd forget to take them off before I made it to the white carpet. Within 10 minutes I would hear my mom hollering my name and she'd point to the dirty footprints streaking across her clean floors and I'd see just how much damage I'd caused. So, when I sat in Sunday School class and heard about Moses taking his shoes off, it just made sense that God was a "no shoes in the house" kind of parent.
But, what if God doesn't care about mud and dirt in His presence, what if this act that looks slightly silly to us sends a much deeper meaning than simply keeping the floors clean?
We're in the middle of our God Always sermon series and looking at 4 distinct things God can always be counted on doing for us. When we as Christians today say that God is always speaking to us, the world may balk at that and ask how that's possible since no burning bushes or stone tablets written on a mountaintop have come out in a long, long while. They point to the way God used to talk to us and say that since those modes of communication aren't happening anymore, clearly God has stopped talking. But, we know this couldn't be further from the truth. God has never stopped talking to us, we have simply gotten better and better at tuning Him out.
In undergrad I majored in Mass Communications and so many of my classes and research projects were directly aimed at the impact of the internet on the way people communicate. One of the more interesting phenomena I read about was the effect social media and "bit data" have on how people listen. Bit data refers to these tiny clips of videos that get posted from news outlets, professionals in various fields, and individuals, each of them trying to cram as much information into the tiniest bits of time so that they can get more views online and more engagement with their posts, meaning people commenting on it or sharing it to their own personal page. With this new approach to communication, not only are we seeing the average attention span plummet (Here is a fascinating article on this topic), but we're seeing a shift in what it means to actually listen.
Rather than hearing an opinion stated or an argument presented and sitting with it for a time so we can fully grasp it, we are unintentionally programming ourselves to simply hear rather than listen. We scroll through these pages and give the person on-screen a fraction of a minute to see what it is they're saying, whether they're leftist or conservative, Christian or atheist, scientist or hippy, you name it! The second we realize they are not in line with our beliefs or opinions two things can happen if we disagree with them in any way. We either tune them out by scrolling away before they ever finish or we simply hear what they're saying all while formulating our own arguments against them.
The latter is interesting because of the stark difference between hearing someone and listening to them. I hear someone's voice when I register the sounds coming out of their mouth, but I listen to them when I engage with them and sit with their words so that I can fully understand not only what is being said, but why it's being said.
As Moses approached the bush we have to remember his past. He had grown up in the Egyptian palace, separated from his true identity and family, he had tried to help a man but ended up killing another in the process, he had fled the only life he'd ever known, running for his life he would up stranded in the wilderness where he finally found some sense of family with his wife and in-laws. Finally, he had reached a place he thought was good enough.
God knew this as He approached Moses and knew that the task He had for Moses was going to be difficult, uncomfortable, and hard to listen to given the state he was in. And so, God tells him to prepare himself to hear God speak to him. God tells him, remove your sandals and recognize that now is a time to listen and engage. God didn't care about dirt and grime on the floor, he cared about Moses being prepared to be spoken to.
When I say God always speaks to us, I mean every word of that sentence. God does not go quiet on us, God does not withhold His guidance or His answers from us, though they may not be the answers we wanted. God is speaking to you right now, today, in whatever shape or circumstance this day finds you in! That should be exciting, but it should also be a wake-up call for each of us because it means that we, like Moses removing his sandals, need to prepare ourselves to be spoken to.
Clear your hearts and minds, and remove whatever sandals you need to so that you can approach God with a new attitude today, one that is ready and willing to be spoken to by our Creator. Not so that you can hear and ignore or hear and refute, but so that you can listen and engage and be changed, shaped, and molded to God's will rather than your own.
