Paying No Attention

Lately as I’ve been reading through the OT, it’s the negative verses of Scripture that have been having the greatest impact on me. By “negative” I simply mean those verses or passages of Scripture that are descriptive of an event or character that went contrary to heart of God. This morning as I finished up 2 Chronicles, I read another such verse:

“The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.” (2 Chron. 33:10)

It stuck out to me like a sore thumb and I was immediately pierced to the heart. It made me wonder how many times the Lord has tried to speak to me and I’ve simply paid no attention. How many times do I ignore His still small voice? How often do I feel a prompting of the Holy Spirit, and then walk the other way?

Tasha and I both have been reading David Platt’s book Radical, and in the process, the Lord has spoken some pretty direct and specific things into my life, most of which are not easy to hear. But my prayer is that as our family continues to seek the Lord and His will for our lives, our small steps of obedience will lead to more immediate and larger steps of obedience—that we would grow in our understanding that His still small voice is worthy to be trusted—that He knows what is best for our lives—and that to ignore it or pay no attention to it is perhaps the most foolish and illogical thing that we could possibly do.

O Lord, may it be so. Let us hear and then obey.