A lot has been happening in my life in the last year.
I have walked through mountains I never dreamed I would see and I have ventured through some of the deepest valleys I ever could have imagined.
This last weekend I was talking with a very sweet woman in her 80's following one of our weekend services. She came up to me and told me this:
"Pastor JD, do you ever wonder if the Lord knows your address? Do you ever think he isn't listening? I know you do, even though you are a Pastor, I know."
She had my attention.
"Pastor JD, I am a widow, I lost my husband some time ago. One day as I was sitting in my living room, crying, yelling, screaming at God in the middle of my pain. I was mad, I felt like the Lord had forgotten about me. I cried out "Do you even know where I live?" A few moments later my doorbell rang. As I opened the door there stood a young man, not over the age of 18 that I had seen at church a few times, but never interacted with. He stood on my porch with a dozen roses and said: "I was praying this morning and the Lord told me to buy a dozen roses and come to this address."
"Pastor JD, He knows your address and He is listening to you even when you think he is distant and preoccupied."
“Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.”
I love Malachi 3:16
I love the phrase "...and the LORD listened and heard."
Listening and hearing are two different things. The hearing of noise is a passive unconscious function of your body. Listening requires active engagement with the noise to decipher a sound and language and a message.
The Lord is listening. Not hearing you and me, but actively engaging with what we are saying. Remembering it. Writing down and recording your thoughts and desires, your dreams and ambitions.
In this current season of my life, I am being reminded of this idea constantly. I am daily engaging with the realities of prayers prayed a decade ago. I am getting to lead at a level I never imagined, one I never verbalized to anyone but the Lord in the quiet dark moments of early hours years ago.
He is listening. He is remembering. He is recording. He is recalling.
The question is, are you speaking something you want to be recorded, remembered, recalled, fulfilled?
Let's be a people that live in the reality that He knows our address, that he is listening, recording, fulfilling what we are speaking. Let's be a people that declare the promises of God over our seasons and situations. Let's be a people that usher in revival by the words we speak and the words we pray.
