Silenced Alarms

Recently a student had some insights about an article I wrote many years ago.  I’ll post them at the end of the article.  They are good and relevant.

Here’s the article first:

SILENCED ALARMS (2004)

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” Psalm 139:23-24

It might seem like an innocuous greeting, but it contains a deep and powerfully destructive twist. “How’s it going?” could be just an innocent inquiry into your current state of affairs. But unless we are careful, it might propel us toward a destructive path that will lead away from our spiritual commitments and send us headlong into impossible self-assessment.

Measuring our progress is important. We all know that saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Goal setting is not only essential; it seems to be inherent in the human condition. God designed us for work with goals in mind. The problem is not effort. The problem is measuring progress according to human standards. God’s evaluation of success often doesn’t look at all like the human counterpart. In fact, if we begin to use human models to determine our progress, we may soon discover that we have left God’s path entirely, no matter how successful or virtuous the accomplishments.

God gives us His standards. They involve glorifying Him, obeying Him alone, deliberately pursuing service to others without expectation of return, sacrifice, doing good to enemies – all kinds of “backwards” measurements. But these are not the subjects we must first exam. What we need to look at first are those subtle indicators that we have stepped off the path of God’s measurements. We need to make audible the silent alarms of our lives so that when we start to veer off course, we get warning signals.

Some of these alarms are quite personal. My warning signs may not be your warning signs. Some are fairly common; common enough so that merely mentioning them will open that inner awareness we all share. But there is a warning that belongs here: God works in the quiet places. He rarely shouts. He hardly ever uses red flags. No, the Spirit nudges, hints and implies. The God of Power is not a God of Force. Why? Because it is in the quiet, inner stillness of the soul that our deepest character is formed and that is where God works. Because His alarms are so soft, they are easy to ignore. They are easy to turn off. The result is an instant loss of sensitivity. And an instant increase in the alarm level. God begins with the lowest possible decibel alarm. He is not interested in shocking us with a thunderclap or frightening us into submission. He is a Father, attentive to our emotional frailty. So he begins softly. He begins with “please” and with suggestion. He appeals to our moral and spiritual sensitivity; the very qualities that He created in us for this purpose. If we decide to silence His alarms, He has no choice but to turn up the volume. And He will continue to turn up the volume on one particular point of disobedience until at last we either hear Him or go deaf. God is merciful. He never uses more volume than we need. And He never uses less.

I know what it is like to have the volume turned up – way up. I have reached the “thunder clap” level in some parts of my life. The experience is very unpleasant. But God’s mercy includes another wonderful fact. As soon as I listen, He turns it down. I can, through deliberate listening and obedience, reduce the alarm level back to the soft whisper and the gentle tug.

With this in mind, perhaps you will benefit from some of the silent alarms I have discovered. If these set off any signals in your life, consider it an opportunity to beg for His mercy and ask to have the volume turned down.

Claiming success without glorifying God

Accepting accolades for activities that do not glorify Him

Feeling pride and possession over things that are not holy

Gaining insight without gratitude

Being spiritually afraid of God

Fearing time alone

Experiencing status quo pain – willing to live with a certain degree of disharmony Compromising integrity

Being unable to pray, finding prayer ineffective, experiencing the lead ceiling

Making excuses

Retaining the “Rainy Day Syndrome” – saving a little of addiction just in case

Playing the servant role with antagonism or out of obligation

Feeling guilt

Reading the Bible without hearing God speak

Reading the Bible without comfort

Noticing that the joy of living is gone

Experiencing days as drudgery

Discovering shifts in first priorities

Recognizing old sins continue to plague you – no new ground being broken

Wasting time

Thinking of God’s time vs. my time

Feeling afraid to let someone else know me

Discovering arrogance

Discovering that I am unwilling to change toward holiness

Feeling insulted or scandalized

Keeping secrets about your life

Experiencing a desire to destroy character

Thinking “I can handle it”

Saying to myself, “It’s just the way that I am”

Telling myself that I can’t help it

Thinking in a closed system – nothing will ever change for me

Thinking that I am completely responsible for my future

Thinking that I don’t have any choice in the matter

All excuses are invalidated by the fact that God created us in His image. We are responsible because we have the power to choose – it is part of the image. But whenever I start to think that I have no choice in the matter, I am entering shaky ground. Bells are ringing! God is not limited by our feeble imaginations as to what solution is available.

Believe is not a relative term.It does not have a continuum or gradation so that I can somehow get more and more of it to fix problems.It is digital.ON or OFF.Belief is not the issue when it comes to alarms.I either believe or I do not.It is obedience that is the issue.I do not need to believe harder, I need to obey more.Alarms are an indication of a lack of obedience, not a lack of belief.

God’s method of success measurement is quite simple. If there are no alarms, you are in line with the Truth. You are not required to generate your own alarms. God is quite capable of doing that without you. You are only required to listen and obey. As David said, God will do the searching if we let Him.

We are designed to be connectors, not power generators. It’s His power flowing through us, not our power generated on His behalf.

We are called to be servants, not satisfiers. The One we serve is God. He determines the quality and dedication of our service, not the ones who are the recipients of our efforts. As soon as I turn my evaluation over to the ones I serve, I have stopped looking at the Master. My service is only to depend entirely on Him and respond to whatever He brings into my life.

There is an Early Warning System of recovery for silenced alarms. By the time you hear the fire alarm, it is too late. The plan is to catch the blaze before the flames, even before the smoke, when it is still just a fuse without the right amperage, a gasoline can without a tight lid, a poorly ventilated garage.

Of special note is the power of secret sins. Secrets are the Teflon deflectors of all compliments. There are two alarms here. If I can’t share my inner struggle or the exact nature of my behavior with some other significant person, then I will resist God’s grace to help me with that struggle. If I seem to be able to open myself to God but at the same time be unwilling to reveal myself to some other person, I discover that the recovery process is incomplete. This never works. As long as I wish (want) to keep some part of myself completely private (and that is the net result of sharing it only with God), I cannot connect with God’s grace or with the support of others. God seems to prefer to work through others. Perhaps that’s because He knows how much we are broken and how much we need to identify in our brokenness. This unwillingness to share myself is also rooted in pride. It is my unwillingness to take the steps of true humility.

Secondly, private secrets prevent positive growth. As long as I have secrets, I know the disparity between my inner life and my outer appearance. This means that I cannot accept the compliments of others, because I know that their compliments are based only on my appearances. Therefore, I reject the compliments. They come under my own internal judgment and, of course, are found insufficient since I am insufficient and dishonest. It is not that the compliments are ingenuous or undeserved. The compliments and encouragement is real. But I judge them as undeserved because my own soul is closed to outside scrutiny.

Silenced alarms are true soul killers.

If you found any alarms that have been disconnected at the source, you may want to plug them back in, hear their warnings and ask God to accept your grief over the agony these have caused. He is a master electrician. He can always re-wire the circuits. But never until the alarms are removed.

Here’s what my student had to say:

Insights on “Silenced Alarms”

Goal setting is not only essential; it seems to be inherent in the human condition.

God designed us for work with goals in mind.

God doesn’t measure success the way man does and if we do that we will move out of God’s Will.

What we need to look at first are those subtle indicators that we have stepped off the path of God’s measurements.

We need to make audible the silent alarms of our lives so that when we start to veer off course, we get warning signals.

The God of Power is not a God of force.

It is in the quiet, inner stillness of the soul that our deepest character is formed and that is where God works.

God’s alarms are so soft that they easy to ignore and turn off.

If we decide to silence His alarms, He has no choice but to turn up the volume.

And He will continue to turn up the volume on one particular point of disobedience until at last we either hear Him or go deaf.God is merciful.He never uses more volume than we need.And He never uses less.

We are called to be servants, not satisfiers.

God is the one that evaluates you, not those you serve.

There is an Early Warning System of recovery for silenced alarms. By the time you hear the fire alarm, it is too late. The plan is to catch the blaze before the flames, even before the smoke, when it is still just a fuse without the right amperage; a gasoline can without a tight lid, a poorly ventilated garage.

If you found any alarms that have been disconnected at the source, you may want to plug them back in, hear their warnings and ask God to accept your grief over the agony these have caused. He is a master electrician. He can always re-wire the circuits. But never until the alarms are removed.