Don't Put It Off!

Ah, Portugal. There's so much to do, but so little I feel like I have to do when we are here.

Talk about a foreign feeling. When we are back from vacation, let's make sure we are still on track with our investment plans. You know, just in case we want to retire here. With Vanguard advice, no matter what your retirement goals are, we can help you get there. That's the value of ownership. Visit vanguard.com and explore Vanguard advice. All investing is subject to risk. Fund shareholders own the funds that own Vanguard.

Services are provided by Vanguard Advisors Inc., a registered investment advisor. Hi, I'm Joanne Vickner, Meemaw with It's Storytime Meemaw. An answered prayer for stories that point children to God on the Truth Network for Kids. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Encouraging Prayer. God offers an open invitation for His people to talk with Him at any time about anything. On Encouraging Prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the bestselling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer, provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray. And now, here's James. So, James, you were literally just telling me about the way you fixed a dishwasher this week, and, you know, what that had to do with prayer.

So, go ahead and tell the story to our listeners. Well, my wife and I have a dishwasher that really isn't that old, but you know how they can be, that the plastic parts on the inside can break pretty easily. So, we were dealing with that, and I was holding parts of it together with twist ties, but it needed to be better. And the other morning, I was out in the kitchen at breakfast, I think it was Monday, and the thought came to me, you need to pick up the parts for the dishwasher today. And it came to me so clearly that I decided to make a note of it on my calendar and get it done that day, especially because I'd been putting it off. Well, about 45 minutes later, I had to take my wife's car into the shop for a repair, and as we are on the way there, I see a dishwasher out on the side of the road. And sure enough, it's the same make as ours and a different model, but close enough, and someone is throwing it out. So, I jump out of the car, grab the parts that I need, and the repair is made in moments when I got home. And now I have spare parts too, because there were actually extras. And the reason why this matters is that I really believe I heard from God that it was time to pick up the parts for the dishwasher, even though I didn't really know it at the moment.

But I hadn't thought about the dishwasher in weeks, and all of a sudden it comes to mind very clearly the same morning that I drive right by one that has just the parts I need. You know, a skeptic would call that coincidence. But this kind of thing happens often enough to people who pray that I sincerely believe that God was at work. And it's what some might call a God wink, if you will, which is basically hearing from him kind of unexpectedly. Darrell Bock Oh, yeah.

You know, I had that happen this week, actually. I was praying about a lot of things, and all of a sudden it hit me like, you need to call Mike Drayton. Well, Mike Drayton was somebody, you know, that used to come to our Christian Businessmen's Committee in Mocksville some years ago, and I knew he'd been sick, but it was just so strange that this message would come in, you need to call Mike Drayton. And I actually put it in my notes, not like when you said the note, I recalled the situation, because when I called Mike Drayton, talk about a phone call that needed to be made. Oh my goodness, he was just in a place, he'd been through a lot of things with COVID, and a loss of his mother, and oh my goodness, it was just like, I know now, okay, it's pretty obvious, God, why you had this for me. And I'm so grateful that I could be there for my friend when I really would have had no idea that that was going on, but he just isn't the kind of person that I have seen in two or three years, so he went on my mind.

Yeah, no, that is really cool. And it brings to mind something, Dallas Willard, who's an evangelical author who was chair of the philosophy department at USC some years back, wrote about hearing God. Listen to this, he said, people who don't hear God insist he doesn't speak to them, but perhaps their hearing is not in tune.

Radio and television messages pass through our bodies and brains all day, but we aren't appropriately tuned receivers, so we can't pluck them from the air. In the same way, we are showered with God's messages, but they go past us because we are not attuned to God's voice. Some of Jesus' deepest teachings are about hearing. He taught in parables to those who did not really want to hear the truth, so that those who didn't really want to hear the truth could avoid it. He explained that not everyone has ears for the straightforward purpose of hearing, so they use their ears to sift out what they don't want to hear. Again, you know, Jesus would say, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. So he urged his hearers to make a greater effort to hear, assuring them that the measure they received would be proportional to the measure of their desire and effort. And this is where prayer really gets practical. The more we live in prayer, the more we just love and stay close to Abba Father, the more he lets us in on what he's doing around us, and it's a very cool place to be, because you're caught up in the flow of his will and his presence, and sometimes you're not even aware of it until he shows you, like it was that like it was that day for, you know, that way for me the other day. And Willard pointed out that true communication with God becomes communion with him. Remember that Jesus said that with the measure we use, it will be measured to us. Well, if we're generous in our communication with God, I think he's going to be that much more generous with us, and we'll learn how to hear him better.

Yeah, that also makes me think of Samuel, right? He heard God and didn't even know it. Eli told him, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. What a great prayer, isn't that?

I mean, I think that's really the starting place for us. If we want to hear God more, I mean, there's a lot in it. And if you think about that whole story of God calling Samuel when he was just a boy, it says in 1 Samuel 3-7 that Samuel did not yet know the Lord, the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. So there's this correlation between knowing the Lord and hearing him. And the more we get to know him, the more we'll hear him. That's such a fascinating topic, James. What would you say to the skeptics who equate hearing from God with, let's go ahead and say it, not being quite in your right mind?

Sure. I mean, we can all think of people who have mental health issues, who claim they've heard from God and gone on to do something terrible. Or we might also think about the grad student who told his coed colleague that the Lord had told him that she was going to marry him.

And she responds funny. He didn't tell me that. But I would say that those are simply counterfeits to the real thing. Just because counterfeits exist, however, doesn't mean that the real thing doesn't. In fact, this is one of the most exciting things about the Christian life, hearing from God. It's like life with the lid off because you know that God is involved in your life and it's this beautiful thing. That is so true.

I mean, it really, really is. And you see it in Scripture again and again. I mean, this isn't about faith based on our experiences where you just have to have one sensational experience after another. It's really more about a friendship with God and maturing in your walk with him over time.

That's exactly it. You know, Jesus said, you are my friends if you do what I command. So a lot of hearing really starts with obedience. And if we haven't been hearing from God, we need to ask, have I been obeying him? If we start with being really intent about obedience, I believe we'll hear from him more.

I've learned that from personal experience. It's also what Jesus is going after when he says anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them. We'll come to him and make our home with them. This is about living in his presence every day.

The natural communication that happens between people who love each other. So it really is possible for us to hear from him. And usually that won't be an audible word, but it may be a thought that's clearly impressed on our hearts, you know, as when you had to call your friend.

But it will never be something that contradicts or disagrees with God's revealed truth in his word. And we want this, Robbie. We want to hear from him because there's just nothing like it. So would you wrap up this with a prayer that we would have ears to hear? Amen. Let's do it, Lord, please. Help us. Help us to have ears to hear. Speak, Lord. Help us to pray that more. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. And help us to be your obedient servants because we know that as we are, we'll hear from you more and more. And we praise you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray. This is the Truth Network.