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So I decided to accept a challenge to write on communication breakdown and I thought to myself, this topic has been written and spoken and preached to death. I mean we have all heard about communication breakdowns between husband and wife, child and parent, student and teach, boss and employee, even pastor and congregation. What more could there be to write about this topic I wondered? Then I sat down to pray about it and realized that there is one communication breakdown that is worse than all of them and most of us don’t even realize that we are participating in it on a daily basis. That is the communication breakdown between man and God.
Now I know what you are thinking, what do you mean? I have a very active prayer life I talk to God all the time. My response to that is yes most believers do talk to God all the time but talking to someone is not communication. Communication comes from the same Greek root word where we get the word communion. That is what communication is it is verbal communion with someone. When we think about communion with God we think about a cup of juice or wine and a wafer of unleavened bread that we take at church at least once a quarter. But communion is much more than that it is fellowshipping with someone, talking with them not to them. In the fellowship of believers today we spend lots of time talking to God praising Him, worshiping Him, making request of Him, even occasionally thanking Him. But as I pastor of 19 years I know for a fact that we don’t communicate with Him.
Not a week goes by that I don’t have some dear saint of God ask me one of the same two questions. How do you know you’re really hearing from God, or how do I know when God is really speaking to me? No matter which way they ask it what they are really telling me is that they don’t communicate with God they talk to Him not with Him. Somehow in their life they weren’t taught the difference or someone forgot to mention the second part of a prayer life to them. Part one is talk part two is listen. This is the thing we know is the problem when one of the other communication breakdowns happens and it is the same with God.
Just tonight as I was getting ready to write this article I had a conversation with two twenty-something young ladies named Beth and Angela who both expressed that they had recently learned the art of listening to God and both were telling me how amazing it was to them to hear God speak to them. They talked about how when the started to hear Him communicate with them how much their love for Him and grown and how much closer to Him they felt and how much easier it was to know when he was speaking to them. Jesus himself said it best in John 10:27 “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.”
So how do we repair this communication breakdown? The answer is as simple as fixing any other communication breakdown, take the time and listen. You want to restore communication with God then try this little exercise and see what happens instead of your normal devotional time, just pray this simple prayer and wait for an internal response: “God I am sorry I am always talking to you instead of with you. So today it is your turn what do you want to talk about?” Then listen and what ever comes into your head next take as God answering you and actually hold a conversation. I do this out loud on my part of the conversation; it helps me distinguish between me and God. May look strange or sound strange if someone overhears me but I am not trying to communicate with them but with God. Try it see if it works. I guarantee you it will. Then start making that a part of your regular private prayer times. Often I find myself in the car alone with God just talking together about every little old thing. But then when He needs to tell me something important I know it is Him speaking. That is how you fix the worst communication breakdown in history.
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