God has always been on Twitter

As I taught this morning in Open Door, we went through a lot of ideas about talking, listening and when/how we should do any of it. With Twitter in the news so much due to the Iran crisis and its capabilities to flaunt gov't censorship, I could help making one important distinction.

I was teaching my class that we are indeed bombarded with "information energy" in today's world and that it is critically important to demonstrate a discipline of availability to God. I began to use the twitter cloud of an example of how we can at any moment, tune in, and see what thousands, maybe even millions are talking about in a linear stream. The problem here is that so much of it is useless information.

For me, the value comes from seeing patterns and the occasional diamond in the rough. Here is the question: When I spend so much energy listening to what other people say, whether in tweets, 24 hours news cycles, television, radio... Do I have the discipline to listen for God speaking to me in the "still small voice" among the storms. Am I capable, indeed, am I even attempting to spend time listening to something other than the world around me?

In order to hear God, and discern his will for me, I must embrace a discipline of "time out" and just look at the occasional tree, flower, even sunrise. With all of my knowledge and ability, I can't make a tree. God watches and listens to our Twitter cloud of thoughts and prayers all the time. Twitter is actually a poor substitute, because it forces concurrent ideas into a linear stream of information so that we can relate to it and process it. God has no such constraints. He uses his mastery of concurrent diversity to love all of us all the time and hear all of us all the time.

It is my sincere prayer that I can get better at listening more, talking less, and perhaps even unplug from this neverending distraction machine. I value technology, the internet, facebook and even Twitter, but I value my relationship with Jesus more. He is there for me when the power is out, when I am disheartened, when I am filled with hubris, and even when I fail. He loves me when I succeed and when I fail, and he is my Abba father... my refuge and my vision/hope for the future.

All of this came out of 1 Samuel 3:1-10
If I could have, I would have put this on to Twitter in a series of Tweets.. alas, I am too old to be able to express my thoughts that succinctly. Perhaps, I'll leave that to my kids for the future. I am stuck in blog/email world for this level of complex thinking.