Listening

A quiet spot is required.

Open ears are required.

An open mind is required.

An open heart is required.

In our normal everyday lives, we listen to the radio, to the television, to the person in line at the store, to the weather forecast, to the person calling us names as they cut us off in traffic.

We listen to our children, what they want, what is hurting them, and what they find most bothersome that day.

Sometimes we listen to our parents (as we get older, we seem to value their hidden wisdom much more), sometimes listen to the youth leader or pastor.

Very rarely though, do we listen to God. Rarely I say because we always "hear" God and we always "see" God. We see Him in the world around, we see Him working in lives around us and we see Him when he works in our lives.

We hear Him when he asks us to do something, when He tells us to stop doing something, when He desires us to serve Him.

Yet though we hear Him, we do not listen. Listening would require that we fully acknowledge Him, His wishes, His plan, His desires, His likes and dislikes of our current state of living. Ultimately it would require that we most likely need to change something about ourselves, do something more for Him or stop doing something for Him. It could be more drastic, such as moving away, becoming a missionary half-way around the world or standing in front of 30 people teaching and leading a Sunday School class, or a small group.

Listening to God requires (as stated earlier):

A quiet place: We must block out all the maelstrom of life (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maelstrom, 2nd definition) and find a quiet place in which we can focus on God and God alone. We can listen to Him in this small quiet and find out truly what He desires for us to be, to do, to not do and most of all, how He desires to use us for His glory.

Open ears: We must open our spiritual ears to listen to God. This means being willing to hear the voice in the small quiet that we have attained. You must hear the voice, before you can listen to the voice.

Open mind: We must have our mind open, for it is the tool of Satan to plant thoughts of fear, thoughts of doubt, and thoughts that are misleading in general. Satan seeks to devour us, even if we are a saved Christian, he will stop at nothing to destroy our walk with God, destroy our testimony to Christ and see us fail to be that which the Lord desires us to be. Satan wishes to destroy our testimony so that others will fall by the wayside. Having an open mind is paramount to being able to listen to God. We must block out the wiles of the devil and place God alone in our thoughts to be able to listen fully with understanding and willingness to be led by the Lord.

Open heart: We must understand that God will ask us to do things that are not easy, are not fun and are not glorious to ourselves. However, with the open heart that is required to truly listen to God, we can understand that it is for Him and His will that we are listening, and thus we can have grace, strength and wisdom to accomplish all things through Christ. We can understand that His calling is so far above any other that there is truly no comparison and that His blessings will far outweigh the temporary pleasures of the Earth.

With all four of these items present, we can truly listen to God, His will for our lives, and we can do so understanding that it is not about our needs, our desires and wants, but about His kingdom, His glory and His desires and wants for our lives. We can understand what He requires of us, and we can accomplish it with the necessary grace, strength, wisdom, compassion, understanding and peace knowing that He is standing there with us, guiding us and keeping us from falling on our face, if we are truly listening to His guidance.