“Pleasure isn’t a bad thing. It’s a gift from God.”

A thought by Mark Batterson from his book,  Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God(p. 82). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Five days a week Margaret and I get on the 101 and head to her job.  One of the great pleasures is to see the Sun coming up over the San Gabriel Mountains.  God created the Sunrise for a lot of reasons and our pleasure is one of them.

Mark says, “When did we start believing that God wants to send us to places we don’t want to go to do things we don’t want to do? Sure, taking up our cross involves sacrifice. But when we delight ourselves in the Lord, God will give us the desire to do whatever He’s called us to do, no matter how difficult it is.”

He goes on, “I’ve had many conversations with church planters over the years, and one of the common questions they wrestle with is where to plant a church. Many of them have done demographic studies, and that’s due diligence. But I always ask the desire question: ‘Where do you most want to live?’ That question often results in a quizzical look, so I double down. ‘Where do you want to raise your family? Do you prefer the city, the suburbs, or the country? Do you want to live by family or get as far away as you can? Are you a mountain person or a lake person? West Coast? East Coast? No coast?’ The reason I ask those questions is that I believe church planters will be most successful in places where they really want to live. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? But what makes it difficult is that we’re more in touch with others’ expectations than our own desires.

“Some of us have no idea what we want because we sacrifice our desires on the altar of other people’s expectations. We settle for ‘should.’ We settle for ‘have to’ instead of ‘want to.’ And then we wonder why we don’t feel the joy of the Lord. It’s because we’re listening to the wrong voices.”

Mark then adds, “Frederick Buechner noted the challenge of choosing the right voice to listen to in his book Wishful Thinking. Buechner cited three default settings: society, the superego, and self-interest. If we don’t turn them down or tune them out, those become the loudest voices in our lives… Buechner then flipped the script and revealed a litmus test I’ve learned to love. ‘The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest?…I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing.’   I might even add, it’s a God thing.” 

So, what voice do you tend to listen to?