He Who Has Ears to Hear...

How often do our prayers consist of nothing more than requests of God?  I have become more aware of this in my own prayer life recently.  "God I ask..."  "God give me..."  "God bless..."  Interceding for others, and asking God to bless us is not a bad thing.  In fact, it's scriptural.  1 John 5:14-15 says, "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have what we asked of him."  I believe God loves to bless his children, and wants us to ask him for his blessing, but there is more to prayer than just petition.

How much time do you spend listening for God to speak?  How often do you stop asking, stop talking, and just be still before the Lord?  After all, he doesn't always speak through a strong wind, or an earthquake, or fire.  Sometimes his voice is a gentle whisper (1Kings 19:11.)  How can we hear if we don't stop talking long enough to listen?  Malachi 2:2 says, "'If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name,' says the Lord, "I will send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessings.  Yes I will curse them, because you have not set your heart to honor me.'"  Clearly God desires for us to listen to him, because what he has to say is immeasurably important.

I came to a rather humbling conclusion this week.  There are two reasons I think it is hard to listen for God's voice.  One is simply that silence feels awkward.  No one likes a gap in conversation, and I always long to fill it with my own voice (no matter who I'm talking to!)  The second reason is fear.  That's right.  Fear.  I realized that I get nervous when I wait to hear God speaking to me, because more often than not, he calls me to do something outside my comfort zone.  Over my years of following the Lord I have learned that he rarely calls us to do what is easy, or even what we feel like doing.  Instead He he calls us to that what will bring him the most glory.  Keep in mind the fact that God doesn't call us to be comfortable; he calls us to be obedient.

There are a few ways we can listen to God.  One is through prayer, and having a still heart before him.  When you quiet yourself before God and seek him with an open heart, you will hear him speaking.  You might not always like what he has to say, but you can bet that if you are open to his will, he will speak to you.  A second way to hear God is through scripture.  It's called the Living Word for a reason!  The Bible isn't a book to be simply read, but is a way for God to communicate directly with his people.  When you read God's Word with an eager heart, you will often find that he is speaking to you through the written word.  Amazing isn't it?  Often as I read scripture I get the feeling that the particular passage I'm reading was written just for me.

Our approach to the Lord should never be one-sided.  When we come before God in prayer it should be with a humble heart and open ears.  We must remember that we're praying to the Creator of all things!  He is the one that has given you life and breath!  Our first response to God should be worship and praise.  Our humility before him will lead us into an attitude of listening.  When we listen for his will then he will make us doers!  


"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does."  (James 1:22-25)