Listening to God

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. (Genesis 11:4-6)

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is 2717 feet tall, the length of over 9 football fields, or well over half a mile tall. I'm not sure what the people were capable of back in the time of Babel, but it stirred God enough to move Him into action. It reads as though the people know to do so is to violate the command of God to be fruitful and multiply and fill the ends of the earth (Gen 1- creation and Gen 9 - post-flood). They had a good thing going after the flood and did not want it to be interrupted by dispersing.

In other words, God reduced man down to Noah and his family, and sin still permeates the world to the point that we defied God's command. "Let's create a city-state large enough to hold us and not be dispersed throughout the world."

What about us today? What do we refuse to do to listen to God? How does He stir us and move us from comfort to create action? You know the answer to this in your own lives and as people in your own community, but the fact is we are constantly settling. God has ways of moving us in the direction He intends.

Pray we listen to God and seek His desired action in our lives to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28). Pray we not settle but seek first the kingdom of God and all that means.