Have you ever known of a person who had no rhythm? Seems like at any gathering of people where music is involved there is at least one person there who is pretty sure they have rhythm...but they don't. Remember Elaine from Seinfeld? She had that crazy dance that looked like someone having a serious seizure. She was just positive that she had rhythm and could dance, but she was absolutely terrible! It's almost like she had more than one song in her head and was trying to dance to all of them at once.
Our lives get like that sometimes, don't they? It's like we're trying to juggle so many things at once that nothing ever really gets our focus and, before you know it, we're completely out of rhythm and looking a whole lot like Elaine's dancing. What if we could tune all of the rest of it out and just concentrate on one tune for a while? What if we could gain some perspective and, by doing so, gain some traction as well and get back to dancing to the only tune that matters? What might life look like at that point?
As often happens with God's rhythms, it isn't always intuitive or easy for us to get there. God says that we have to shift the focus away from ourselves and care for others first. God says we need to give freely and graciously in order to gain for ourselves. God says we don't need to bow up at the guy who has 37 things in the 25 or less line at the store or plot revenge on the guy at work who stole the promotion right out from under us...but instead we need to turn the other cheek. That stuff doesn't make sense!!! It just isn't fair! We need to make a scene about the guy at the store and get the manager to kick him out of line. We need to set the guy with our promotion up to fail. We need to keep more of what we earn so we have it to spend on ourselves later. We need to make sure we take care of ourselves because we know the world isn't going to hand us anything.
Right? Isn't that the way most of us approach parts, if not all, of our lives? If we try our hardest and always do our best for ourselves, we'll be OK. I mean, that's all we can really do, isn't it?
Ummmmm...not even close.
Tuning in to God's rhythm starts with an earnest heart. We have to truly want to know what it is to march to the beat of God's drum. When we change our hearts then it becomes possible to change everything else. So with an earnest heart we begin to communicate with God through prayer. We lay ourselves out before God and then listen to what God has to say. You will find that God speaks through pretty much anything. I've heard God speak through a song on the radio, commercials on TV, my wife and kids, my pastor, a total stranger, and many other ways too.
Pray with an earnest heart and listen for God's rhythm and then you are ready to act on it...to move to His beat instead of the world's or your own. God's rhythms aren't necessarily intuitive to us but they make perfect sense! We learn that part of faith, a big part of faith, is learning to hear God's rhythm for our lives. It's the repetitive process of eliminating the noise of the world through prayer and only tuning in to what God has to say to us.
The more of us that start doing that, the more the world changes around us. The more we seek to do that not only privately but also with others, the more momentum we gain and the more glory is brought to God. Ephesians 2:10 says it better than I ever could:
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Can you hear the beat yet?
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