Excerpt from Mark Yaconelli’s book entitled “Growing Souls: Experiments in Contemplative Youth Ministry”

A friend of mine attended a Christian pastor’s conference in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The participants included one Native American pastor who was on his first trip to a major metropolitan city. During a lunch break the Native American pastor took a walk outside with one of his colleagues. As they stretched their legs along the busy sidewalk, the pastor suddenly stopped, turned to his companion and said, “Do you hear that?” The friend paused and considered the bustling noise of the city. “Hear what?” he replied.

Planted along the downtown sidewalk was a small row of trees. At the base of each tree was a circle of flowers. The pastor walked over to one of the trees, knelt down, reached beneath one of the floral clusters, then stood and opened his hand, revealing a small black bug. “It’s a cricket.” Dumbfounded his friend replied, “How can you possibly hear that?” The Native American pastor reached into his pants pocket, took out a handful of coins, and threw them into the air. As the coins hit the cement, people from all directions stopped and looked down. The pastor turned to his companion and said, “It depends on what you’re listening for.”

I must say when I read this portion of the book it set me back for a minute and was honestly, I guess what you would call speechless! I think that there are so many times in my personal life where I do not or would not have heard that cricket, or would have possibly heard it but due to my busyness of life, would have never stopped to take time to see what it was worth, or to examine if I am just supposed to sit back and listen to it for a while.

Why isn’t it enough to listen? Why is it that we have got to feel like we need to be moving for God to be? Now that pastor moved alright…he moved right over to the sound…moved the flower clusters and held the cricket! That pastor did what many of us would not, when he heard the noise ….he moved closer…He grabbed the flowers and moved them so he could hear it more clearly!!! Why do we sometimes hear a noise (from God) and continue walking, when what He is wanting us to do is move closer, shuffle a few things around, and boom there He is waiting to hold us, show us what it is that He wants us to do…but truthfully what He wants is for us to come to Him when He speaks, and not avoid what He is trying to say….but come closer and really focus and spend the time with Him….So what are the flowers that you need to shuffle to hear Him more clearly, what are the sounds that you are so focused on that you do not hear what God is trying to say…I challenge you to truly listen for the crickets and when you hear them….RUN…right to the flowers, move them, and grab on to whatever it is God is trying to tell you!!!!

Mark 4:9 Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

John 8:47 He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

Jeremiah 7:23-24 But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you. “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.

John 6:44-45 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.