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We live in a society where we are bombarded with advertisement.  If you turn on the television, read the newspaper or magazines, or even just drive down the road or walk into a store, you will be hounded with ads trying to get your attention and give you a desire to purchase their product.  I believe this has had an effect on us spiritually in a way we may not realize.

We may tend to think that if something is important it will be thrown at us time and time again so we won’t possibly be able to miss it.  What we have done is we have put the responsibility for tending to our own lives off on the news media and business owners to hound us with the things that are important for us.  We have developed a reactive attitude instead of an initiating one.

Some of the most profound and involved things the Lord has spoken to me have been one-liners that I would have missed if I wasn’t paying attention.  First, I had to be in a position to pay attention by getting into His presence.  With advertisement hounding us down we may not understand that we have to ask, seek, and knock.  We need to go after the Lord and pursue Him.  He says He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.  But we may think that if it’s important He’ll track us down and hound us with it until we get the point.

I don’t say this to put fear into you, because there is a place of mercy and grace in Him so that we don’t have to be so afraid of missing something that our pursuing Him is from a fear based motive.  But we do need to realize the danger of missing something important because we are sitting back waiting for it to jump out at us.  There are some one-liners in the scripture that are powerful truths that a casual reader would miss.  Some of the one-liners that the Lord has spoke to me personally have taken months or even years to accomplish.  They have been a big part of my ministry and what I was to spend my time doing.  But if I wouldn’t have been paying attention I would have missed the timing of what He spoke.

You can tell we have been infected with this by just asking why we announce from the pulpit what is written in the church bulletin.  And how many people in your office actually read the memo’s that come out?  These things show us that we don’t value the information put out to us enough to pay attention to it.  We think that if it’s important, someone will talk to us about it.  Even ministries have had to jump on the bandwagon by sending out several mailings every month to remind people they are there or to let them know about products they have available.  Churches have implemented programs or gimmicks to keep people coming back.  Where the diligent seeker seeks out those things that are going to help him to grow spiritually.  The diligent seeker does not need to be bombarded and reminded about their relationship to the local church or to the ministries the Lord has connected them to.

We have allowed this mindset of complacency to filter into the church.  It has been a deceptive ploy of the enemy to keep Christians from taking proper responsibility for their own life, their own spiritual growth and their obedience to God.

How do we combat this stronghold?  First of all, by taking the time, every day, to seek the Lord.  Inquire of Him what He desires for you to do with your time, your energy, your skill and your money.  Pay attention to where He has you.  Seek out why you work where you work, go to church where you go to church, live where you live and have the associations and friendships that you do.  Don’t take these things for granted.  And secondly, but not less important, is to pay attention to those ‘small’ words that come across your path.  Everything in the Bible is written for a reason.  Pay attention to all that you read.  And take notice of what is going on around you throughout the day and look for clues that the Lord is speaking to you or trying to call your attention to something.  Seek Him and remain open.