A Line From Lisa…on Listening to the Lord
Have you ever spent time with someone who was just bursting with excitement, agonising over a challenging situation, or maybe just wanting someone to talk to and thought afterward, “I could have sent a cardboard cutout of myself and they probably wouldn’t even have noticed”? Though you were happy to share their joy, comfort and pray with them in their distress, or be the listening ear they needed, you couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed that they didn’t seem to care what might be going on in your world. I have, and I must confess, I may well have been the guilty party in some of those one-sided conversations. I wonder if God ever feels like that?
In Jeremiah 33:3 we read, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know”, and in Matthew 7:7 we are encouraged to, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened”. We are so grateful for that invitation and quite good at ‘letting our requests be known to God’ (Phil 4:6) but how eager are we to be still and listen to what God wants to say to us? Far too often I have heard the comment, “I pray every day but I don’t always have time to read my Bible”. That, my friends, is a one-sided conversation! God has chosen to speak to us primarily through His word and by His Spirit. The same Holy Spirit who ‘breathed the Scriptures’ into being through the pens of the Bible authors also administers those words of ‘teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness to us, equipping us for life and ministry (II Tim 3:16-17). We should have the same commitment and desire to hear God’s words to us as we do to sharing our words with Him.
What if God answered us audibly when we pray? I wonder how many times as we pour out our hearts to the Father asking for help, guidance and wisdom He would say, “I have already answered that question, given you the wisdom you need and directed you in the way you should go. It’s right there in my Word, but you haven’t listened”. But perhaps there is another problem. Maybe we have listened, but we didn’t like the answer! Some years ago we were at a church service in the UK and the pastor was speaking on prayer. He shared four ways God might answer our prayers. The first three I had heard many times before; ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘wait’, but the pastor added a fourth; “MYOB (mind your own business)”. God is God and we are not! He knows the end from the beginning and is sovereignly accomplishing all His plans and purposes perfectly for His glory and our good. Do I, do we really trust Him? Are we willing to walk one step at a time with confidence and rest in the Father’s answers even if He chooses not to tell us what He is doing or when He will do it?
We live in a time that can only be described as a blender on high speed. Every moment is scheduled in segments that have no wobble room to stretch beyond the allocated timeslot. Even our casual, incidental meetings are snatched and rushed, often ending with the words, “We’ll have to get together for a real chat sometime soon”. Unfortunately, our devotional time may be no exception. Even as we are reading our Bible and praying, our minds may shift to the items on the day’s To Do list, or we may find ourselves with one eye on the Word and the other on our watch! Perhaps, like many of us, being still for any length of time does not come easily but it is absolutely necessary in our time with the Spirit in God’s word. We can be assured we have God’s full attention when we talk to Him. Surely, He deserves to have the full focus of our hearts and minds as He speaks to us. Let’s not be guilty of rushing our time with the Father or having one-sided conversations with Him.