I've Heard It All Before

You know the expression “I've heard it all before.” I know I've heard it all before! We've become so sick of hearing it, we're now pre-inclined to just turn our ears off whenever someone wants to give us something to hear. Hearing is like a curse sometimes. We hear too much when we don't want to hear it at all, and we can't hear enough when we're trying to hear more. Hearing is very straightforward, but it is never really straight inward. We hear things every day.

But do we actually listen? Listening implies that you hear. And indeed! We DO hear it! Like I said - we've heard it all before! But have you listened to it all before?

I thought I had. I went around for twenty years claiming that I'd listened. I was brought to church every Sunday to listen. But did I? No. I promptly fell asleep on my mother's shoulder. I had absolutely no intention of listening. Sure, I could hear it, and remember a sentence or two for a moment. I thought that was enough. But once that moment was gone - so was the hearing. The hearing was on to the next thing, and the listening hadn't even been activated.

Granted, some of the listening was activated. I'd like to think there are several things I absolutely would not do, even if tempted very persuasively. But for the vast majority of the time, the listening wasn't activated. Sure, I heard who God was, I heard who Jesus was, and I heard he had died on the cross for me.

But what the heck does that mean? Absolutely nothing to a young, impressionable American youth, too preoccupied with the materialistic goodness the rest of her life had to offer. Oh, and of course there was the raging sidenote of school to be accountable for. Who had time to really want to understand what they were talking about on Sunday? Sunday was the day you had to get up really early just to be bored. The rest of the week was for living your life, and essentially forgetting about church. And they talked about the same thing - over and Over and OVer and OVEr and OVER again. WHY?!

I didn't know. So I just kind of kept hearing it, and not listening. I might have tried to listen a couple times, but for the most part, it was boring nonsense that didn't fit. Church, to me, was a conglomeration of random stories and parables. I started taking communion, and was confirmed, but it still didn't really mean anything. They kept pushing this whole Jesus idea, and how he died for us. Me? Really? Yeah. He's some guy who lived two thousand years ago during the Roman Empire. Big whoop. And what was with calling him 'King of the Jews' if he died for me? I'm not a Jew.

I still didn't really know. Nor did I want to. I kept being happy, living the way I was living. Not a care in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to tell you right now: It's CHANGED.

Many of you know I went to Hawaii for school, but then (much to all of your dismay) I came back after just two semesters. HUH!? The most common response I get after people find out that little factoid is “What!? Why on earth did you come back to this crappy place!?” It's why I've tended to shy away from the fact. It's as though I were given a gift to go to Hawaii, but that coming back was just wasting it.

But it's the opposite. If I hadn't come back, I would have wasted the gift. Yes, at the time, the gift was going. But now that I'm back, I'm discovering the true nature of the gift. I felt focused when I came back. Mostly on school.

But then, on no particular day this past October, a man who was in his eighties finally decided to be baptized after being an agnostic his whole life. And from there, I cannot explain what happened. Not in logical human terms anyway. You might manage to call me a kook. I'd call myself awoken. Awoken to the Spirit.

An atheist once told me that since I felt it was not my duty to convert people to Christianity, then my faith must not be very strong. But in fact, it is NOT my duty to convert people to Christianity. It is not humanly possible. People have been planting seeds of faith in me my whole life, but not one of them has made me change my mind about my faith. Not one. We cannot choose where the Spirit will go, or how it will do its work. I went for twenty years calling myself a Christian, yet doubting. Truth be told, I still doubt. It's human nature.

But I've discovered something else. I've discovered the work of the Holy Spirit. There are times where it's relatively invisible. But there are other times where it's staring me in the face, beckoning me on. There are facets of living for God which used to turn me off. Completely. But now, I would have them no other way than to be a huge turn ON.

I cannot make you listen to me. I doubt many of you allowed yourselves to even completely hear me out. But if you have - I will say this: Hopefully, somewhere in you, this has planted a seed. I wouldn't expect this to be the only one. That'd be arrogant. But I'll be praying for you.