Face to Face

How do you communicate with others?

When I went away to college in 1968 my Dad told me that he expected me to write a letter every week. I must have complied because he was paying the bills.

Communication is vastly different today than it was 45 years ago. It started with the US mail and evolved into the Internet. Today you can fax, twitter, text, call on your smart phone while you check the Internet, or email from your phone, iPod or computer.

A friend of mine has a ministry called Face to Face. If you get a chance check it out on the web. It is a sports ministry that started with him interviewing Christian athletes. He would sit down with them, face to face.

So much of our communication today is dependent on technology. It is not personal. It is not face to face. And as much as we humans desire and need deep personal relationships, we seem to prefer the technology.

In the movie "Fiddler on the Roof", Tevye is a milkman that spends his days delivering milk from house to house as he walks along with his old lame horse. Spending most of his time alone, he talks with God constantly, face to face. He doesn’t text or tweet or talk on his cell phone or listen to his iPad.

That’s what Psalm 19 is about, making time for God.
He speaks to us through His world. "The heavens declare the glory of God".He speaks to us through His word. "The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul".
For me, the meaning behind this Psalm is that God is a personal God. He desires to have an intimate relationship with us. He wants us to spend time with Him. He wants us to talk to Him. He wants us to listen to Him through His world and through His Word.

Let’s be sure to get face to face to "our Rock and our Redeemer".


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2019&version=NIV;MSG
http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Ps.19

Can You Hear Me Now? 1 Corinthians 14:29-40

I lead a mission trip to Mississippi once that rocked my world. It all started during church on Sunday, the first day of our trip. Positioned in the back of the congregation in order to keep an eye on my students who where spread throughout the sanctuary, I hadn’t realized the extreme oppressive weight I was feeling until the pastor interrupted his own sermon saying, God was speaking to him and he had to address something.

He asked the congregation to pray with him so I closed my eyes and bowed my head. The pastor started to pray about someone in the congregation who needed encouragement. As he described what was weighing this individual down, I knew he was talking about me.

Keeping my eyes closed, and head down I let the words sink in. Tears were streaming down my face as I felt the weight lift. How did this man know what was going on inside of me? I had never met him before. As he was ending his prayer the pastor asked a woman from his congregation to stand up and give the woman in the back, wearing the brown headband, a hug and tell her that God loves her. Oh my, I thought, I’m the woman with the brown headband.

What an amazing experience! Our scripture today says, “If someone sitting there receives a message from God, the speaker must stop and let the other person speak.” This is exactly what happened that Sunday, only the person speaking and the one receiving a message from God were the same person.

This experience made me question, am I sensitive to God’s leading when I speak, or am I more focused on getting my words out that I don’t listen? Today’s passage is more about listening than it is about talking and we all should be listening to God.

Read today's passage at Biblegateway 1 Corinthians 14:29-40