When God Starts Texting

Recently I had the opportunity to visit a church while I was on vacation. The service was different, but not unusual except for one thing. About halfway through the pastor’s sermon, an amber alert started being sent out to everyone’s cell phone. Now, if you’ve never had the pleasure of receiving an amber alert, let me fill you in: You receive a message, that usually appears much like a text, giving information such as the name of the missing child, where they we last seen, and a description of the vehicle they might be in. However, instead of using your text ringtone, you are startled with a frightening noise I can only describe as being similar to the “most annoying sound in the world” Lloyd makes in “Dumb and Dumber” (look it up, it’s a great scene). It’s the most startling, unnerving, and haunting sound you’ve ever heard, and EVERYONE got the alert, all at different times, ALL at full volume. No joke, this went on for about thirty minutes.

One thing I noticed though, was that nobody really paid attention to the message. MOST people (including myself) didn’t even look at it. They just hurriedly scrambled to shut that noise off. It was almost as if we were all bothered by the fact that this message was interrupting the sermon. The pastor even joked that “This is what the devil does when he knows you’re getting into the good stuff.”

But the thing is, a child was missing. A child had been abducted, and it was all a group of people could do to keep themselves from being annoyed.
 
It’s funny. We beg for God to show us what he desires from us, and when he gives it to us, with a blaring noise and flashing lights, we scramble to turn it off. And then we have the audacity to keep on asking for our sign. Almost as if to say, “You couldn’t have been talking to me, that’s not what I wanted you to want from me”. Maybe we need to listen better. I know I need to listen better when God gives me an answer. It’s not like God has the wrong number.
 
My challenge is this: When the Lord puts someone in your path because he knows you are the perfect person to help them, don’t just step to the side. Instead, offer what you can. Be the light in someone’s life that God has made you to be.

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John Birkey
Worship Pastor

John has been a part of the Highland Praise Team since 2013, and became our Worship Leader in late 2015. John has been a musician for most of his life and has been playing in praise bands for several years. He also serves as the Worship Leader for Highland's Celebrate Recovery program.