“Are you listening?” Have you been asked that lately by your spouse, a teacher, or maybe a friend? It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard. After all, you’re just listening to the thoughts someone else has formulated into words. Yet the reality is that it is incredibly hard at times to listen. We tune out what we don’t want to hear. We don’t like to be reminded of how we were late for an appointment, how we let a friend down, or how we hurt a family member. Instead of listening, have you interrupted someone to have them listen to you? Listening is hard. It takes patience, respect for another person’s thoughts, and the humility to give someone your attention.
But as hard as it is to listen to other people, it is even harder to listen to God. “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). By nature we don’t want to listen to God. We want to hide from Him like Adam and Eve did. We don’t want to hear about our wrongdoing and need for repentance, we want to go on indulging the desires of the Old Adam. We don’t even want to hear about the Savior. Jesus said of the Jews: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matthew 13:13).
But then Jesus turned to His disciples and said, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.” What made the difference? It was nothing in the disciples. They were just as spiritually deaf as anyone by nature. Only the Lord’s Word can open sin-deaf ears. “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
By His grace the Lord has opened our ears to the sweetest news we will ever hear: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17). The more we listen to the Lord’s voice, the sharper our hearing becomes. However, the opposite is also true. If we tune out the Savior’s call to turn from sin and trust Him for forgiveness and life, our soul’s hearing will become muffled and we will miss out on the comfort and guidance the Lord wants to provide.
Our hearing is an amazing gift of God’s grace. May we put it to good use by really listening, not just to the people around us, but to God Himself as He speaks to us in His Word. Go to the Word and “listen” to the Lord today. Let’s look forward to tuning out all the “noise” of the world tomorrow and listening together to the voice of Him whose words are eternal truth and everlasting life. |
