https://vimeo.com/67224821

I'm Wayne Jacobson and this is Engage. Over the last two weeks we've been focusing on this growing conversation between you and God, how it is that you follow him by listening to him, and then the kinds of things we can talk about in prayer, the kinds of questions we compose, or ways we think that help us listen better to the kinds of things God might be breathing into our lives. Now, some people ask, Wayne, do you have a prayer closet that you do this in every day? And the answer to that is, I really don't. I don't see this as a daily ritual, but an ongoing conversation. So it happens throughout my day, whether I'm driving, whether I'm listening, whether I'm on the phone, I'm still listening and talking to God as best I can, not at times when I don't do any of that, and I just enjoy the day whatever I'm doing. But there's somehow a heart that always turns toward him and listens to see what happens. Now, there are times when something particularly critical is going on, or I'm feeling a bit distant, that I'll go have a concentrated time. My prayer closet might be a walk in the foothills near here. It might be sitting in Sarah's garden for a bit and just asking God some questions and listening. I don't always get the answers I need right then, but somehow over the next day or week, those answers will kind of soak through to my heart if I need them. There are times when I don't need them. I considered unanswered questions to mean there's nothing I need to do about it right now, so just keep walking with him. At other times, it really is up to me. God doesn't want to control every detail of my life. He wants to share my life with me. So sometimes that means, Wayne, do what you want to do, and I'll do it with you. I'll be in it with you, and that's often how it works as well. But what you need to do to have an effective life and a growing conversation with God is to have the freedom to fail. I know that sounds strange, but the performance basis of, I've always got to get this right. It always has to be perfect. If I ever miss God and do something wrong, what? The whole world will blow up? Your life in him will end? When you go on a journey with God, believe me, this takes a bit of struggle. It's a bit of learning. It's quite a learning curve to learn how to listen and how to follow. No different than my kids learning to talk, my grandkids, and calling things by the wrong name for a while, and we help them learn what exactly things are called. We do the same thing. So you're going to struggle, you're going to have places where you make mistakes, and yet you may still be struggling with sin in your life, and probably not, maybe I'm sure you are. Don't let your sin consciousness creep in you. I'm not talking about sin. We'll talk about that later. But those who think I can't have a relationship with God as long as there's sin in my life are never going to know the freedom that comes from living in him. The best thing you can do for your sin right now is simply learn to live in him, lean into him, listen to the things he's saying, and he's not going to always be talking about your sin and telling you how to fix it. He's going to be inviting you into a relationship with him where you learn to listen to his words of affection, and then let him lead you into the things that most concern you in your life. Doing that's a bit like learning to play the piano. If you're not going to play the piano until you can sit down and play Beethoven's Symphony to absolute perfection, you'll never play the piano. Same thing's true about learning to follow God. If you have to get it right, if every note has to be in tune, if you've got to play on the right tempo on the right beat, you'll be exhausted. God doesn't invite us into a relationship through our performance. He invites us in because he wants us to know him, and he realizes for God to connect with humanity is a bit of a joy and a bit of a challenge. So start with something simple. What can you trust God with? And listen for the simplest nudges he puts in your heart. And recognize this. There are going to be things that make him more gracious to you and make you more gracious to other people. I know listening to God's got a bad name. People are worried about God telling them to shoot their neighbor or cheat their business partner. It's not him. You don't have to think more about that. God leads us into a gracious way of living with him and with each other. It's probably more about apologies to other people, not confrontations. It's inviting them into a greater life, not convincing them that you're right. And when you can learn to live in that space, you become more engaging in the world. It's not about perfection. You've got to lose your need to be perfect. You've got to lose the need to get everything right every day or you can't follow him. And now you're ready to go on a bit of a journey. You're ready to listen, to follow when he gives you his leading, and to watch what unfolds as the day goes on. If you can only trust him to the degree that you get everything right, then basically you're only trusting in your performance. And that's not good enough. So how do you know if you're listening? Well, I think it's this way. As you're listening to him, are the fruits of the spirit growing in your life, are you more gracious, are you more tender, more humble even? I notice this about the way God speaks to us. It's not with blinding clarity so that we can scream, thus saith the Lord, or God told me to. People I've met in my life who use that kind of language about listening to God usually aren't. The people who are listening to God say things like, I have a sense that God might want this, or I'm thinking God's leading me to do this. It's not with complete certainty. We never get that. It's just the nudging us into a different reality of living and loving Him. That's how you know you're following Him. When you're more at rest in the Father's care and His affection for you, and freer to share it with those around you.