Am I listening to God?
Do I prepare myself to listen to God?
Am I doing the long term things - not taking shortcuts?
How desperate am I to find Jesus?
These questions are written in the front cover of one of my old journals. I don't recall whether they are my words or something I had read and decided to write in my journal as a reminder. Either way, I had forgotten that they were there so it didn't really work!
We have just participated in another Pentecost Sunday. Not all of our Sunday meetings seem to be blessed with the feeling of the closeness of God. Sometimes that's just my state of mind. Other times it's the way in which the congregation as a whole approaches worship. Whenever we take our focus off God our worship time will suffer. And, as humans, we are very good at taking our eyes off God.
On Pentecost Sunday there is a focus on asking the Holy Spirit to come. When our focus is on God and we spend an hour or so waiting on Him and asking for that rushing wind and tongues of fire to come upon us we usually sense a presence of God that is stronger than other times.
For some reason, the special event that is Pentecost makes us focus a little more on God than we seem to do on a 'normal' Sunday.
When I look at those questions at the top of the post I realise that most of the time I am nowhere near prepared to hear from God when I read the scripture, pray, attend music rehearsals, attend Bible Study or roll up to the Sunday meetings. Is it any wonder then that sometimes I leave feeling flat and unfulfilled.
