“Preached” tonight at Entheos
Well.. more like yesterday now I guess.
I talked tonight at Entheos, for a bit about the busyness of our lives. A bunch of the youth, and adults too, had been talking about how overwhelming life is these days, with homework, sports, school, hobbies, their parents asking them to do stuff, friends, tv, internet, instant messaging, etc.
(click through for more info, religous in content).
I asked them some questions on that, and then offered some advice, which really broke down to this:
- don’t procrastinate. (Super hard for even me to do).
- do what you are doing to please God, not to please anyone else like your parents or teachers or friends.
- consider why you are doing all those different things, and consider giving some of them up. (For example, I pretty much don’t watch any tv anymore).
Then I kinda pondered for a bit on that busyness of our lives, and if that was a lot of noise, and if that noise was preventing us from hearing God’s voice… because it turns out there are passages in the bible that say “hey, really be quiet if you want to try to hear God”.
Then we showed a dvd called Noise by Rob Bell, or more his little company Nooma. These are cool DVD’s, so I’m not going to give away the contents of it, but here’s the blurb:
Nosie - NOOMA 005Why is silence so hard to deal with? Why is it so much easier for us to live our lives with a lot of things going on all the time than to just be in silence? We’re constantly surrounded by “voices” that are influencing us on how to think, feel, and behave. Movies, music, TV, internet, cell phones, and a never-ending barrage of advertising. There’s always something going on, always noise in our lives, but maybe there’s a connection between the amount of noise in our lives and our inability to hear God. If God sometimes feels distant to us, maybe it’s not because he’s not talking to us, but simply because we aren’t really listening.
We then broke up into small groups, and I asked the kids to try to go to their rooms in silence, and spend the first few minutes in complete silence. It was pretty cool.. I laid on the floor, and just listened. And dang it, the place is noisy.. the clock on wall was like TICK TICK TICK.. very annoying. I counted four planes flying over head in 5 minutes.
We then had some discussion about the questions, and a freshman asked if we could finish in silence, which was a great idea, so we did.
And boy.. boy I walked out of Entheos today calm, at peace. Even knowing when I got home I’d have to work (and I’m still working now, with some bindings issue under 10.3 giving me fits). But wow. I’ve got to try just being in silence.
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