I Just Can't Hear The Music

She was nine years old and doing well at the piano for her age. She would be playing in a recital in a few days, a recital that her teacher felt she would be one of the top performers. Today she was sitting at the piano in her home practicing the piece she would perform. The practice was not going well at all. She was distracted today by all the things that grab a nine year old little girl’s attention. One of her friends had called about a new boy at school. He had supposedly told his friend who had told his buddy and had let it slip at lunch and was overheard by her friend that the new boy liked her. All the pressures that come with being nine years old and having a new boy that might have said he liked you were pressing heavy on her mind. Besides that, her friend had been helping her modify her dress for the recital to help her look a little older, a task they were trying to keep from her mother. Because the new boy’s mother like piano she had heard and what if they came to the recital. Oh the pressures of being a nine year old.

So there she sat at the piano trying to practice her piece of music but her mind was a million miles off. As she attempted to play the line again that started the song she one more time missed the same note, she had continually missed the note over and over. It was at the next miss that her mother reprimanded her again over missing the note for what seemed the hundredth time. This time as frustration coupled with the pressures of being a nine year old boiled to the surface the little girl replied in a very frustrated voice, “I know it wrong, I just can’t hear the music.”

Though I never played in a recital I did take four years of piano. I know what it is like to seem not to be able to hear the music. I know what it is like to miss the note. You see you know it’s the wrong note but for some seemingly uncontrolled reason your hand up and grabs the wrong key and presses it like it’s the right one. I know what it is like to have my mother call down the stairs, “That’s not the right note.” Something I know because I have pounded it several times as if to make it the right note or punish it for getting in the way. The thing is, the right note, the right thing to do, was always very close to the wrong one, sometimes right beside it. But the frustration of the day and the wondering of my mind along with the lost direction in my thinking caused me to push the wrong note even though the right one was close by.

I have prayed at times what the little girl mentioned to her mother. I have told God I just couldn’t hear the right stuff. I just couldn’t seem catch the right note. As I cried out to God I told Him, Jesus I just can’t seem to hear the music right now. Life just seems so flat and off key!

You probably know what I mean. Living, if that’s what we want to call it, life sometimes is so frustrating. It is so easy to get strangled by all the stuff that is rushing through our living. Life becomes very loud and cluttered and we miss the music. We are constantly bombarded by the noises of life. Cell phones ringing, car alarms sounding and the everyday noise of our hurried life. Everywhere we turn the sounds of our world screams at us and each tries to override the other. Our life has become wrapped up in all this with much coming and going.

The pressure to perform is pushing from every side and we race a clock to make it all seem to work. At every turn life screams and yells its demands. We get up and hit the day running to accomplish all of life’s difficulties. Yet, in the mist of all this thing we call life there is a voice calling, calling reaching trying to touch our life with real meaning and purpose. God would love for us to stop and hear His voice and feel His anointing. But we will have to step away from the clutter long enough to listen.

I thought this morning if God would have called our cell phone or sent us an email or something on Twitter or Facebook we might have been able to have heard His voice above all that is going on. But because we didn’t take time to meet with Him we missed Him and we can’t hear the music.

What do you keep missing as you search for the right feeling, the perfect day or the ease of life?

What is strangling the relationship you once had with God?

What is killing your anointing taking the oil from your vessel?

When you can’t hear the music, life in not anointed by God.

When you are pressured by living, life in not enjoyable.

When you don’t enjoy living you can’t tell of the wonders of God.

When living is not fun you will not tell others of God’s grace and mercy.

When life is too heavy you can’t have a spirit of hospitality and love.

When you can’t hear the music the song just doesn’t really matter any way.

When you can’t hear the music, you miss the power of the song!

When you can’t hear the music you end up just surviving and not living.

Remember Jesus said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life (compared to a word that means breath), and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10 NKJV

Jesus didn’t intend on us missing the song. So He warns us

 "Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with indulgence (burdens, headache brought on by over immoderation), drunkenness (intoxication by stuff) and the anxieties (distractions) of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.  For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.  Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man." Luke 21:34-36 NIV

What is getting your song?

Why not stop and put everything aside and go spend some time in the arms of Jesus?