Getting God Stuck in Our Heads

I've had some songs stuck in my head. A whole record album's worth. For forty years.

My first two months of my freshman year of college was spent listening to Carole King's Tapestry album, though not by choice. My roommate's boyfriend back home had given it to her as a going away gift, and she played it incessantly. Every day, multiple times. For weeks... The music, the lyrics became imbedded in my brain. To this day, I can be in a store with background music, or listening to a classic rock radio station, and hear the opening notes of any of the songs on that record and I find myself immediately transported back to that dorm room freshman year. Even before I consciously identify the song and the artist, my whole being knows it, knows the music, the lyrics and all its associations. Why? Because of all the time I had spent immersed in listening to that album.

Our minds are amazing things. What they are exposed to, listen to, are immersed in, tends to stick around for a very long time and pops up in random places in our lives. I can't say that any great or marvelous things other than pleasant memories of my college years have sprung up in my life because of my immersion in Carole King. However, in any way that I have chosen to immerse myself in God, I have experienced great blessing in the ways that His Word, His wisdom, His presence pops up in random places in my life.

How do we immerse ourselves in God in such a way that we recognize Him in those places? Like in my exposure to Carole King, time is a crucial element. Do we take the time to be in His presence? Are we sitting with Him, in prayer, in listening for His voice, in pouring out our hearts to Him, on a daily basis? 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Why is this God's will for us? He knows that if we rejoice always, pray without ceasing and continually give thanks, we are connecting with Him, in relationship with Him. When we are in relationship with Him, we come to know Him, His nature, His purposes for us, His love for us. When we invest time in God, letting Him into our day on a continual basis, it becomes easier to hear His voice in the din of our everyday lives, to trust Him in the good times and in the crises.

Are we investing time in God's Word? Do we sit down and read it – with Him? Have we taken the time to be in God's Word in such a way that He can fix it into our brains so it is there to pop up in the times that the living word can minister to us in our living life? Again, time is the important element here. “Being in the Word” is just that – being in the Word. Sometimes it's reading large portions of scripture to see God's big picture. Sometimes it is delving deep into a single verse, letting the truth of that Word go deep into our minds and hearts. In either case, we spend the time and allow God to make Himself real to us through His Word.

God knows the seasons and situations of each of our lives. He knows how much time each of us has for Him. He knows that time spent with Him may take the form of singing worship songs in the shower in the morning, praying in the car driving to work, talking to Him over a basket of laundry to be folded. We may or may not have leisurely, sit-down-in-a-comfy-chair quiet times. But we do have time, all over our days, to spend on God, to be immersed in Him. And when we do choose to spend it on Him, we can experience the comfort and joy of being able to recognize the notes of His voice, His Word coming through into the random moments of our lives. We can look forward to the pleasure of having God stuck in our heads...

Unless there is within us that which is above us, we shall soon yield to that which is about us.

- Amish Proverb

(If the above post seems familiar, I've previously published it awhile back at http://trinitylink.com/blog/?p=321)