Good morning…
For years, I have been asked to be the kick-off speaker for the “Lovett Moms In Prayer” group each fall. What an annual delight! Yesterday was the day, and I spoke with a roomful of young mothers who have high hopes for this new school year.
I was asked to share our “fleece” story from the fall of 2002, the story of the genuine voice of God breaking in to move our family from small town Pennsylvania back to bustling Atlanta, Georgia. Here are some of the takeaways we all can relate to:
1) When we are still enough to listen for God’s genuine voice in our everyday lives, we, ordinary people, can be guided into the unique life we are each designed to live.
2) Expect to be surprised by God’s higher thoughts. Our own ways are not the ways of God. God’s dreams for us are more expansive and eternal than the comfortable life of our own dreams.
3) Being obedient to God’s voice is not easy. It may be painful and lonely to follow God’s lead, as we choose intimacy with Christ over our own desires or fitting in with the crowd.
4) As we live in intimacy with God, we will walk, talk, and live in a relaxed manner, just as Jesus was relaxed, walking, talking, and living in oneness with our Father. Living in a relaxed manner is not a goal we can achieve, but it is a transformative byproduct of our intimacy with God.
As highlighted in Richard Rohr’s meditation from last week and shared by a friend, I read aloud words spoken by beloved spiritual mentor Howard Thurman as he encouraged the 1980 graduates of Spelman College to listen to and to become their unique selves:
“There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching… You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls… Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.”
God can’t stand pious poses, but he delights in genuine prayers (Proverbs 15:8, MSG).
Cultivate. Discipline. Listening. Ask the Holy Spirit, “What might it take to cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in my own daily life?”
…Sue…
P.S. Photo by Hayes Potter on Unsplash.
P.S.S. Excerpt from Howard Thurman, “The Sound of the Genuine,” Baccalaureate Address, Spelman College, May 4, 1980. Text edited by Jo Moore Stewart, Spelman Messenger 96, no. 4 (Summer 1980): 14–15.
