Listening for God: Discernment and Service in Faith

When John Wesley started the Methodist movement, one of the very first things he started were Sunday schools. And Sunday schools weren't just for teaching Bible stories. Sunday schools were where they would get the children of coal miners together and teach them how to read, because Sunday was the only day they had off. [00:13:31] (20 seconds)

At this point, we've got like 20 sermons. We can talk about how the economics of our world can fuel our worst impulses. We can talk about in groups versus out groups. We can talk about slavery and our relationship to each other. We can talk about so many things as it pertains to just the first part of these verses. [00:26:29] (22 seconds)

Paul was a holy man. Silas was a holy man. Surely they knew that this earthquake was an answer to their prayer. How did they know that the answer to their prayer wasn't an earthquake to free them? How did they know that it was something different altogether? [00:29:42] (21 seconds)

We have been freed not for our sake but for someone else's sake. God has performed this sign not to prove anything to us but to prove something to someone else and so we will sit here and wait. That's discernment. [00:30:51] (15 seconds)

How do I know when the earthquake is for me and how do I know when the earthquake is for someone else? How do you know when the earthquake is for you and how do you know when the earthquake is for someone else? How do you know when the sign that God is working in our world is for you and how do you know when the sign that God is working is for your neighbor? [00:31:52] (22 seconds)

Faith, the practice of religion, coming to church, reading scripture, praying, is the slow process of clearing out a little bit of the smoke so that we can see what's really going on in our lives and in our world. [00:35:53] (20 seconds)

Read it because it's an opportunity to pause and to stop and to listen, to listen for the spirit of God, to clear a little bit of the smoke out of the air, to figure out what's really going on in your heart and in your mind and in your world. [00:37:31] (18 seconds)

What are you doing in your life to pause and to listen? And coming to church, joining us on YouTube are all great things, but if this is the only thing we got, we're going to miss a lot of things in our life. [00:38:43] (16 seconds)

Once we've tuned our heart, once we've spent time listening, once we've spent time figuring out what it is God wants for us, once we can discern whether the earthquake is for us or for someone else, once we've done that, we can go back and we can look at the slave girl and Paul's interaction with her and we can go and we can make comments on all the things that I brought up earlier. [00:39:29] (23 seconds)

But first we need to practice listening for God in the midst of the noise, in the midst of the smoke, in the midst of the earthquake. We need to pause and listen for the movement of the Holy Spirit. [00:39:53] (22 seconds)