How Does God Get Our Attention? | The Whole Counsel

God's Power to Get Our Attention Through Small Things

So, in other words, God doesn't have to bring some terrible tragedy on the world to get our attention. All it would take is microscopic things. You know, we think of COVID and the whole world shuts down because of a virus that we can't even see with the naked eye.

Yeah, I was thinking about how you can arm an insect to earlier this summer when I was trying to sleep and there was a mosquito in the house and it was buzzing around my head and I could hear it buzzing and occasionally it would land and I would slap at it and it was just miserable.

And I'm not saying that God necessarily sent that to torment me, maybe, but how easy it would be. Something so small, something so simple. And yet, he has that at his command, but he has everything else at his command also.

A Low View of God and the Folly of Escaping Him

And the foolishness of thinking that we can escape him, I think people, I hear people expressing a couple of things in regards to this. One, kind of the idea that you hear people talk about God being too busy to notice me.

So obviously a very low view of God, but he's busy with other things or other things more important than me. But when we read something like this and we see how God describes himself, well, no, he's not too busy.

And it's no effort for him to keep up with you and every other creature that exists. And Hebrews 4 .13 says that there is no creature hidden from his sight. And not only does he see us, you know, he doesn't see us kind of in a social media kind of way where we put on our best face, you know, with our coffee cup and our Bible and we take a picture like life's perfect, but we are naked and laid bare before him.

He sees everything. He sees us like we are and not just the things we do, but the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. I mean, if you believe that, then it's got to change the way you think about him and yourself and sin and salvation.

God's Dreadfulness Outside of Christ

Yeah. And so really this point is for the man who remains unrepentant. Okay. So God has certain rights, but I deny those rights. I argue his right to rule over different areas of my life. I'm willing to give him this, but not this.

And then if some Christian says to me, yes, but do you never fear the Lord? Is he not your dread? And the answer is no, because of a small view of him. But if we think how anything, even the thoughts of our minds that can torment us at night and we can't sleep, how easy it is for God to get our attention.

God's Kindness as Mercy That Wakes Us Up

And so I think one application of that, not only is that we might have a holy sense of God's dreadfulness outside of Christ and to the unrepentant, but also how merciful God is to us that in a world of sin, we are so infrequently tormented, you know, and God's kindness is the fact that I can sleep at night or that my body does work.

Or that, you know, my children are healthy. Those things ought to crash against my indifference and wake me up and say, God could have tormented you to get your attention. And yet he uses his kindness.