Daily PresenceSample

Have you ever forgotten someone’s name in the second sentence of your conversation? It happens to me all the time. I meet someone and we introduce ourselves, then I ask a follow-up question and as they are answering I realize I forgot their name. Not even an hour went by, seconds since this person shared their name and it is nowhere in my memory. I simply wasn’t paying attention when they said it. I went to school for longer than I wanted. It was during High School that I learned that I didn’t like studying. I loved learning, but studying was not something I enjoyed. So, I decided I was not going to study but I was going to focus my attention on my teachers and whatever they were saying. I got through most of my classes without needing to study because I had unwavering attention. If you speak to me when I am concentrating I will not hear you. I promise you I am not ignoring you, I am simply so focused that my mind does not process what is going on around me. Our attention is really powerful. That is why this section of our reading stood out to me:

Zechariah 1:4 “Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the LORD.”

It is incredible to think of how many prophets the Lord sent to his people and they were so focused on their ways that they filtered out everything that was being proclaimed to them. They could not hear the voice of the Lord and what the prophets were saying because they were not paying attention. The following verses talk about how important it is to listen to not just any voice, but the decrees of the Lord because they are eternal.

So many times when we pray we just talk and talk and talk. We never take a moment to simply listen, to pay attention to what the Lord is saying. That is my conviction and my challenge for you today: get rid of all distractions, put your phone away, turn off the TV, and go to a place where you can give God your full attention. Listen and pay attention to what the Lord is trying to say!