One of the most audacious claims of Christianity is that God actually pays attention; not just to us, but to me, that God loves me, knows me, spends time thinking about me; moves in divine providence toward me, engages in the complexity of the sweep of history and human events in order to know me, love me, bless me, sustain me, and to bring me into His presence.<\/p>\n
As a follower of Jesus, when you are tempted to feel sorry for yourself, when God seems to be silent, remember He is never still. And though He may seem distant, He is always thinking about you. He is paying attention to you.<\/span> What matters to you, what you care about, matters to Him. And because He pays attention to you, you can turn around and pay attention to the things that He cares about, that He can\u2019t do without you. Yeah, isn\u2019t that amazing? There are many things God can\u2019t do without you.<\/p>\n For example He can\u2019t build His church without people. He can\u2019t build His church without pastors, without leaders, without those who willingly follow. That\u2019s where you and I come in. The power of paying attention: because God pays attention to us, we are free to pay attention to others.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s just like the men I see who climb up telephone poles. They put on these special spurs that allow them to dig in on the side of the pole and to climb. The climbing is all on them. They\u2019ll never get to the top without exerting energy. But once they\u2019re at the top, to stay there, they have a safety belt they put around them that allows them to work hands-free without fear of falling.<\/p>\n Every day God\u2019s attention in my direction is like that safety belt<\/span>; assuring me that God has never broken a promise or betrayed a trust, allowing me to live hands-free and paying attention to the things that matter to God. That\u2019s the power of paying attention. Who\u2019s paying attention to you depends on what you\u2019re able to pay attention to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the most audacious claims of Christianity is that God actually pays attention; not just to us, but to me, that God loves me, knows me, spends time thinking about me; moves in divine providence toward me, engages in the complexity of the sweep of history and human events in order to know me, … Continue reading “The Power of Paying Attention”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}