Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

My sons are going to become teenager in just about a month. I have already begun to notice some suttle changes in them. Not so much the physical changes like the dramatic Peter Brady voice over, or a major need for deoderant. But the 7th. grade discussions on how was your day are leaning towards involving more girl names and less about trading finger skateboards. There is one change I have noticed that may cost me 10 years less of my life, and that is their lack of focused listening. For the first 12 years of life, they very rarely missed a beat when they were given instructions to do something. Now, they are dangerously close to the realm of selective listening. After the incident today, code name "dishwasher", I tried to explain to them that when you fail to listen to all the instructions, it not only affects you, but it affects people around you. That fact will always blow up in our face when it comes to listening to God's voice in our own lives. Christians, especially pastors, many times have this tendancy to convince ourselves that due to our "spiritual maturity" we already know what God would say in certain situations. So we begin to tune more of His voice out and put more of our spin on our decisons and thought process. However, when we use selctive hearing with God's voice it is always going to affect more than just our own lives. Listen to God's voice in your life and don't get in a hurry to walk away with only part of His instructions.