On a hot summer day I found myself locked out of the house. The sliding glass door had a broken lock and when I walked out and shut the slider, it locked behind me. This was not good at all – not just because of how warm it was, but because my kids were still inside and my wife was not at home. I checked all the doors and all the windows, but nothing was open. Panic started to set in.
At this point my kids came to the sliding glass door and they were smiling. They had no idea what was going on. So we made silly faces and I could hear them giggling. Yet all I could really think about was: “how am I going to get back into the house?” And then it dawned on me, I just needed to ask the kids to try and flick the lock up so I can open the sliding glass door.
I asked the oldest one first and she did not understand. I kept pointing to the latch that needed to go up and I said repeatedly: “flick it…flick it…!” So then I asked the younger one to try and she looked at me and then looked at her sister and with the funniest face ever, she leaned forward and licked the sliding glass door. I said, “flick it” but she heard “lick it.” She could clearly see me flicking at the lock from the other side of the glass, but she still heard something completely different.
In 1 Samuel 3, the Lord began to speak to Samuel. He heard a voice calling him and he confused it with the voice of Eli and it would take several times for him to finally understand who it was speaking to him at that moment. This event in Samuel’s life changed everything for him. Perhaps God wants to have a breakthrough moment with you as well.
Learn to set aside those things that are distracting you from clearly hearing from God. And learn to cultivate a hunger for His truth for your life. It’s time to put down the cell phone and pick up God’s Holy Word and to seek His heart and His will for every aspect of your life. Now is the perfect time to change you schedule, to add a time weekly to being alone with the Lord so you can focus on Him through prayer and meditation, distraction free — and guilt free, too!
We often think we can clearly see and hear from God, yet we do not realize there is this “glass door” that separates us from His presence, from His wisdom and from His will. This door is deceiving and it’s frustrating and it causes us to be out of step with our Savior. And like young Samuel, who was ministering before the Lord, yet failed to know the true voice of God — we too can be out of rhythm with His true voice and will for our lives.
The only way you can shatter this glass door is to take back your schedule, your prayer life and your time in God’s Word. These spiritual disciplines must be your first priority daily, for everything else then will come from this and thus, be based then in a saturated and devoted life of worship to God.
Nick Emery is the pastor of Good Shepherd Wesleyan Church.