Hearing God Through the Noise

As 2009 starts, my prayer is that it will be a year in which God is richly and powerfully manifested in my life and in my family. As my kids get older, I am more acutely aware of the gravity of being a parent who believes in Jesus Christ. It's far too easy to teach my kids sports and too difficult to teach them to pray. After the hustle and bustle of the day, I would rather leave them to Disney Channel for an hour to escape than to turn off the TV and train them in God's Word. I find myself looking for a quick-fix or plug and play family devotional that I can fit into the course of the week rather than allowing God to speak to my children out of the overflow of my own walk with God. I also find myself more enamored as a leader with books and blogs on religious methodologies than with Paul's words to the Corinthians or Ephesians. One problem with our day and age is not the lack of Christian ideals or words, but the abundance of them. I am a Christian book freak with more books than I have bookshelves. As I walked yesterday through the local Lifeway store, I was struck by how we have so much religious teaching, theory, and training, but little of the true Christ-like life. I read this quote yesterday from A.W. Tozer:

"Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. It its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all." A. W. Tozer

"God, grant that I would become totally and completely satisfied in you. Help me to trust in you and your mysterious ways more than I do my gifts and talents. Help me to embrace simplicity and look through the fog of methods and words that currently exist to see and hear from you. Help me to be a lens by which my wife and children see you. Help me understand that my life in you is not measured by how fast or how far I can run, but by how much of you that others see in me. Be my satisfaction, now and always."