Are you listening?

I wonder if the Lord is trying to teach me something about listening. This morning, I opened up a little devotional book that I haven't read in awhile called "Grace For the Moment" by Max Lucado. The verse for today is Matthew 7:8 - "Everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who searches will find." What a promise! In this devotional Lucado describes a man who is blind to everything the Lord is doing because he is expecting the Lord to work in a certain way:

"Once there was a man who dared God to speak: Burn the bush like you did for Moses, God. And I will follow. Collapse the walls like you did for Joshua, God. And I will fight. Still the waves like you did on Galilee, God. And I will listen.
And so the man sat by a bush, near a wall, close to the sea and waited for God to speak.
And God heard the man, so God answered. He sent fire, not for a bush, but for a church. He brought down a wall, not of brick, but of sin. He stilled a storm, not of the sea, but of a soul.
And God waited for the man to respond. And he waited...and waited.
But because the man was looking at bushes, not hearts; bricks and not lives, seas and not souls, he decided that God had done nothing.
Finally he looked to God and asked, Have you lost your power?
And God looked at him and said, Have you lost your hearing?"

While slightly comical, I can't laugh at this devotional too terribly much because it rings true in my own life. If only I would be looking where God is actually moving! Maybe if I surrendered myself to His will and didn't look in one direction, but many, I would see Him working in many more places than I realized.