Hearing Drives Persevering

Psalm 28 “For if you are silent, I might as well give up and die.” Hearing God’s voice is its own reward, but I’ve recently been meditating on how one bonus of waiting to hear on God is perseverance. As one example, I started making videos because God told me to. I had no experience and frankly no prior interest in the field, but at this point in my life, I know that when God speaks, you just have to listen. So for one year I slaved away, learning the craft and posting my work. I got some good feedback from my friends, and at times I found it really enjoyable to learn a new form of self-expression. But there were many, many times when I felt like giving up. There’s been a move over the last decade towards quick iteration and using data driven feedback to progress projects, summarized by the principles in The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. “Run a small experiment, get feedback through data, iterate then run the next experiment” or so the logic goes. But honestly, if I had focused on the data (my videos got no traction for over a year), I would have quit my vlog project many times over. Each time I felt like giving up, I just went back to what God told me, and I knew I needed to stick with it. Fast forward another six months and my best performing video just passed 973,000 views. Today I started to wonder about the point of this devotional sharing as well, and I’m sure there will be many times that I want to stop posting this in the years to come. But I just have to remember that I’m not sharing to gain followers or to feel good about making an impact to a broader audience. Lord I just want to hear your voice and obey your commands. “For if you are silent, I might as well give up and die.” Being in your presence is its own reward. I love you. In your son’s name, Amen.