Why fear God's voice?

Our ladies group at church is currently studying Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted by Priscilla Shirer. So far this is a great study that really makes you look inward at your own loyalties. The idea is that interruptions are just insignificant people or tasks that distract you. However, when God speaks and gives you a significant task it is a Divine Intervention. Instinctively, Christians would automatically think, "yes, I would obey if God gave me a divine intervention." But when faced with an actual God sized challenge we often run away just like Jonah did.  Our running away may not involve chartering a ship in the opposite direction and ultimately getting swallowed by a fish, it may mean we just decided not to decide. Priscilla says, "most disobedience involves just that - a simple choice to stay put."

So why is it that so many people fear Divine Interruptions? Maybe because we fear God will ask us to do something like he asked of Jonah, go share with those people. That could be a whole lesson itself on why God calls us out of our comfort to increase our faith. Participating with God in a task that is so beyond yourself that only He could do it not only places the credit where it is due to God, but it also increases your trust in God. In your weakness, God is strong.

Pride keeps us from accepting Divine Interruptions because we are afraid to fail. We automatically think God is asking us to do the task He gives us on our own. If you are a child of God, you are never alone! The Spirit of the Lord is in you - always. He will equip you for any task He gives you.

Disbelief is another response that results in running away from God's work. We simply don't believe God can equip us for His service. We have so much guilt, anxiety, and self-doubt hanging over us that we fail to trust that God can still use us. Listen, God can use anybody! Throughout history God has changed the lives of people to dared to follow Him - Ester, the Jewish queen who saved her people; Mary, the virgin mother of Christ; Rahab, the prostitute who became part of the lineage of Christ because of her willingness to obey; Peter, the fisherman turned disciple; Billy Graham, son of dairy farmer turned evangelical preacher; and You!

Let's commit today to surrender our pride and arrogant disbelief and trust God and His plan for our life because He is who He is (Holy) and we are who we are (sinners). Trust that God had a plan for your life from before you were born {Jeremiah 1:5}. If you really want to make a mark on this world, "your eternal significance will be found in yielding to the divine intervention God sends your way" (P. Shirer).

"For we are His creation - created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10