Groups Leaders take 'everything' further!!!

My very good friend just emailed me this (excerpted below). I think he makes a great point, and it does well to challenge us as we reflect on the various ways in which we eliminate that which drowns out the whisper. Part of our job as Life Group Leaders is to help shape into "living" what is only "hearing" when it doesn't move beyond the sermon. The environment you create each week as a group leader may be the baby step someone needs to exchange what they think is a great, but overly idealistic idea, into an actual way of life.

I just listened to the podcast from last Sunday (I was out of town then). I loved it, loved it, loved it!

 

But I was struck with the question: did you convince others of the truth that God is present now in every moment at every place? and that this truth is EVERYTHING? 

 

We are so brainwashed by/in the consumerist world that a message about God's constant presence and the need for our frequent silence just doesn't register. To most, it's just not practical. ....which is funny, since it's all about 'practice,' according to the literature.  

 

We aren't practiced at silence or solitude. We don't even know how to start. Instead, we participate in and contribute to the stream of noise in which we were born. We practice noise all the time. We just don't know how to practice silence/solitude. In our mega-church culture, are we guilty of adding to the noise and shoving the silence into a corner?

 

I loved your message, but I just wonder if it falls on deaf ears and if we have to do more than talk about it.  Are we creating environments where silence is nurtured and flourishes and where noise is shunned?