3. Noise and Distractions
Finally, if you’re looking for an extra-challenging fast to consider this Lenten season, consider making room in your schedule for quiet.
While it may sound contradictory to the noise and distractions of this world, fasting from such things will enable you to hear the Lord more clearly and deepen your relationship with Him.
Romans 12:2 of the ESV tells us to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Everywhere you look, people are busy. Running and rushing around to the latest event, commitment, yoga class, or trip, society is numb to the concept that involvement does not equal happiness, nor does Christian preoccupation equal a relationship with God.
In college, I was the queen of schedules and responsibility. With a color-coded calendar of at least 10 shades of the rainbow, I lived this way for five years and didn’t mind it. Since graduating college, however, it has not been until entering young adulthood that I realized what free time, space, and less busyness could do for my relationship with God.
While I understand that seasons of busyness will exist, and having a schedule is not wrong, I want to encourage you today to seek the Lord while He may be found, even if it’s merely in the quietness of your drive to work or five minutes spent in prayer on the floor.
If we expect God to speak to us, we have to be willing to listen and to hear, we have to be accustomed to the silence.
Let Psalm 46:10 and 62:5 be our prayers today:
“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him.”
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