HEARLING AND LISTENING

Deuteronomy 6:4-6 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is God alone, the Lord is One.  And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.”

Luke 8:18 “So pay attention to how you hear. To those who listen to My teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them.”

Some versions of the Bible will translate a Hebrew word “hear” as the word “listen”. It is a clarification for the modern reader for the implication is that you can “hear someone talking and not actually be listening to them. I remember vividly my mother interjecting, in the middle of her scolding me, “Are you listening to me, young man?” Hearing means picking up the vibrations on the air that hit my outer, middle, and inner ear then are turned into intelligible sounding words that can simply go in one ear and out the other,

Listening is focused hearing with the intent of receiving what is said, paying attention, processing, and grasping meaning that can be retained as insight for living.

For the Hebrew, when Moses declared what is called the Shema, the foundationary statement of faith and commitment to God, “Here, O Israel…” they knew that this “hearing” meant doing, being shaped by, directed by, changed by what they were receiving as vital insight and wisdom for living. It meant something to be done and done for always.

This “hearing” is more like our word “listening” but even deeper. Life was to be oriented around God and God alone; oriented upon His revealed Word and commandments because by receiving and doing them, then and only then would life have true meaning, purpose, blessing, and direction.

Loving God meant living in the covenant relationship He had give to His people. It meant that the whole of life belonged to Him and was to be directed to Him. To love God with one’s whole heart, mind, will, emotions and physicality meant that the whole of life was centered and set apart for God. The Lord God has a will and a purpose for every one He has called into being AND that will, purpose, and destiny is found ONLY by living in the relationship God He has made possible through Jesus Christ.

God alone can bring a person, a people out of the bondage and slavery that sin is into a “land of promise” that place where, by being filled with God’s Life and Spirit, we live and grow into the promises He has in store for us, the life we are meant to live. Whether a butcher, a baker, or candlestick maker, a lawyer, priest, farmer, educator, a raiser of children, a Mayor, a Judge, an artist, a singer, a player of musical instruments, a “whatever” your giftings may describe, God alone knows the way for you to flourish and become fully human.

Jesus Christ, as He was teaching about the rule of God over all of life (the Kingdom of God) He repeatedly said, “If you have ears to hear, then hear.” It was more than mere “hearing” He was asking for, but deep listening, believing, and receiving and acting on what Jesus had taught. True hearing would entail doing what God had said. That would make the difference between life and death.

That is till the case today. Today, when you HEAR His voice, do not harden you hearts against Him as if you knew better. Keep listening and responding with a “life-long yes” so that the Lord can keep building on what He has established in you. When we stop listening, Jesus states that even what we have known before will become elusive to us. Following Jesus Christ means to keep following, keep seeking, keep praying, keep saturating your mind and heart with His Word, keep in fellowship and sharing life with other believers. Keep running the race (the life) that God has set before you fixing your eyes on Jesus Christ, for your faith depends upon Him from start to finish.