In a book called "Directions", James Hamilton writes: Before refrigerators, people used ice houses to preserve their food. Ice houses had thick walls, no windows, and a tightly fitting door. In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the ice houses, and covered with sawdust. Often the ice would last well into the summer.
One man lost a valuable watch while working in an ice house. He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but didn’t find it. His fellow workers also looked, but their efforts, too, proved futile. A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the ice house during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watch.
Amazed, the men asked him how he found it. "I closed the door," the boy replied, "lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking."
Have you ever heard God speak to you? If not, is it because you are not paying attention?
Have you ever noticed how different people can experience the same events in their lives and yet have opposite reactions. Sometimes these things can cause certain people to grit their teeth and keep on slugging away, whereas others will just give up and quit.
An accident can cause one to ask, "why me Lord". While others see it as God wanting to show them something in their life. Some have a run-in with the law and talk about how they will get off, while others see it as a sign from God that their life is spinning out of control.
There are people that have narrow brushes with death and laugh it off as having been lucky, while others take a long hard look at where their lives are heading.
What are some of the things that have happened in your life? How did you react to them? I believe our reactions to certain events depends on whether we are paying attention to the how’s and whys.
Tonight I want to ask you, are you paying attention to the events that are occurring in your life each day? If so what do you see taking place? Are these events a coincidence?
Or are these things happening for a reason, and if so why?
I think many times we shrug off these events as just a part of life ,when instead we should be falling on our faces before Almighty God and seeking His heart for our life and our future.
You know, amazing things can happen when a man pays attention to the events in his life. Let’s take Saul for example. Please turn to Acts 9:1-9
where I think you’ll find that he was paying attention.
ACTS 9:1-9
“Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.”
A little background:
Although Paul claimed Roman citizenship, He was also Jewish. Because of that he was thoroughly steeped in Jewish law and traditions. In fact he studied under one of the most famous Jewish Rabbis of his time; Gamaliel. Paul was a Pharisee and he was very zealous.
Even Paul said of himself in Galatians 1:13-14:
“For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.”
· He was advancing in Judaism. In knowledge and moving up in position
· He was extremely zealous- means having Eagerness and Passion
· He had devoted his life to the study of the books of the law. He now saw the followers of Jesus as the number one threat to his faith, and he didn’t care if it was man or woman, If they professed faith in Jesus then he would deal with them and deal with them harshly.
Now, Saul had received permission from the High Priest to go to Damascus to arrest Jews who had accepted Jesus. In route, an amazing thing happened. At about noon a bright light flashed around him and as he fell to the ground he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ When Saul asked who He was the voice said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”
Was this real?
1)It happened around noon
a) they wouldn’t be asleep, because it plainly says they were traveling to Damascus
b) so, it couldn’t have been a dream
2)We are told that it was a real voice, heard not only by Saul but also witnessed by his men; and Saul was actually blinded.
It says, “And he fell to the ground,” I believe he fell to the ground because he could not bear to stand in the presence of the glory and the majesty of the Lord Jesus. It must have been overwhelming.
Many of you might say, “If I saw a light and heard a voice like Saul did I would respond just as he did.”
I’m not so sure of that. First of all people seem to have all kinds of ways to explain things away:
· Under a lot of stress
· Didn’t hear what I thought I heard
· Flashbacks from the drugs
Another time, in John, Chapter 12, Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover, and some Greeks came to see him. Jesus began to talk of his coming death, and then said, “Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
The people were unwilling to admit that they had actually heard the voice of God. They tried to explain it away by natural, or even supernatural, occurrences, as long as it wasn’t really God. Then they wouldn’t have to be responsible to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and change their lives.
And in Luke 16:24-31 the Bible tells us about the hardness of man’s heart in the story of the rich man and Lazarus where it says,
“So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’.”
Someone DID rise from the dead, and most people didn’t listen to Him. That someone was Jesus Christ, the son of God; and the chief priests even bribed the soldiers to lie about the resurrection. How hard can someone’s heart get?
Actually the statement, “IF you had heard a voice like Saul,” isn’t even the issue because we have already heard the voice of God. In some way God has called each of us to obedience, to surrender our lives to Him. And yet we have neglected God’s eternal voice that calls out to us.
Once we have heard God’s voice it is up to us to “pay attention”; to respond to that call. To turn our hearts toward God, confess and repent of our sins and accept Jesus Christ into our hearts as Lord and Savior that our lives might be transformed.
What is transformation?
Have you ever seen a caterpillar? When you get up close some of them can be pretty ugly little critters. They have a couple dozen legs, and wrinkled brown or green skin; a face only a mother could love. Some look like they’re covered with bristles and some of them, you can’t be sure if your looking at the front or the rear.
Yet a day comes when they "pay attention" to their biological clock and begin a process in which a chrysalis, or a shell, forms around their ugly bodies. After a time they finally emerge from this shell radically transformed, or changed, into a beautiful and delicate creature with wings, called a butterfly.
Just like the caterpillar, Saul’s life was miraculously transformed from that time on. Christ came into his life and completely changed him. The Christians who had lived in fear of him heard the report. In Galatians 1:23-24 we are told, “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. And they praised God because of me.” Saul became the most zealous missionary of the early church, whom we now know as Paul, and he almost single-handedly spread the gospel into Asia and across Europe.
For Saul it was a new birth, a new beginning. Are you ready for a new beginning? Has God been calling you, but you haven’t been paying attention?
In Romans 12:2 it says, “ Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
This may be the day of new beginnings for you.........If you will only pay attention.
