“I will take my stand and keep watch. I will take my place on the tower. And I will keep watch to see what the Lord will say…” Habakkuk 2:1-2

I can say with full confidence that I have never used a reference from Habakkuk here at Cracked Pot Pieces, but Habakkuk wanted to hear from the Lord and he went to great lengths to do so. It’s pertinent.

It’s been kind of quiet around our house this week. Sunday started a twenty-one day run of prayer and fasting for our family and our church. It’s an annual thing for the church we attend, and it’s a great way to start off the new year. It’s all about refocusing our lives and allowing God to be our focus. Part of our family’s fast is from television, movies, and video games. None of any of it for twenty-one days. My kids are also fasting social media.

I will admit that I started to turn on the television about thirty times that first day. It was hard not to do it. It was almost automatic. I’m a little embarrassed by that, but yesterday and today the lure has been much less. I mean it’s not like there’s anything all that great on television anyway. Apart from Parenthood, what is there that’s all that great? (I do so love Parenthood. If you are not fasting TV you should watch it.) We pay for a bazillion channels, and most of the time we can’t find anything worthwhile to watch. And yet the set is on most of the day just providing meaningless background noise for our household.

That’s the primary reason we decided to give it up for our fast. We’ve made some dietary changes, too, but I think the media fast will impact us as much as anything else. We surround ourselves with so much “background noise” that we hardly ever just turn it all off and appreciate the quiet.

Sunday evening while our older kids were back at church, Matthew and I sat on the floor in the den and played card games with our youngest son, Evan. We played for an hour. It was fun. It was quiet. I can’t remember the last time we did something like that. Evan wanted to nominate us for Parents of the Year. I even let him win. That’s a lie. He beat me fair and square.

We are hoping that we have emptied the noise from our home in order for it to be filled with God’s voice. We want to refocus. We want to listen for His voice. We want him to lead us, bless us, and work in us this next year. We want to hear from Him.

Sometimes we all need to stop and refocus. What is our focus? Jobs? Money? Bigger, better, more, more, MORE? The world will tell us that what we have is not enough. God wants us to know that He is all we need.

Manufacture some quiet into your day. Turn off the television, let your computer rest, and put down your smart phone. Maybe you’re not ready to go cold turkey on media, but maybe you can set aside some intentional time each day to be quiet, refocus, and listen for God to speak. He is speaking.