WEEK THREE - DAY ONE - CALLED TO LISTEN!

We've all probably heard the saying, "God gave us two ears and one mouth, we need to listen twice as much as we need to speak."  I need to remember that adage daily!  I'm a jabber mouth....always have been!  I LOVE to talk!  And it's not so much that I feel I have better things to say than others, I just have a LOT to say...there are lots of words waiting to come out on an hourly basis!  

But am I so very willing to listen?  And how do I spend my time with God?   Do I spend most of my time  jabbering to Him about my wants, my issues, my thoughts, when He, the Creator of the universe, is ready to share with me His words over my life...so very much more important than anything I could have to say.  Do I pore over His words of Scripture and allow His Spirit to disclose them to me in such a way that I truly hear with attention and interest what He is saying to me, right now.  

His nation of Israel was always ready to tell Him what they wanted, what their problems were, what they thought about things...they told Him they wanted a king; they told Him they wanted to be like the other nations; they told Him they thought His rules over them were confining and restrictive.  And He says to them, "Shama! Listen to Me!  Be quiet for just a bit and hear what I have to say!"  As our text tells us, shama occurs over 1,000 times in the Old Testament.  God longs for our attention.  He wants us to hear Him, and take time to understand Him.  When we do, all of our objections will dissipate...because we will also hear the love behind His words to us and His good, good intentions for our lives.  

Core to this is what the Hebrew people referred to as the Shema, the fundamental prayer that God had declared in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Listen, O Israel!  The LORD is our God, the LORD alone."  To sit and listen to God and to be able to hear Him, we have to acknowledge Him as the one true and living God, which, in Jeremiah's time was one of the main problems for the people of Judah.  Worship of multiple gods had infiltrated their culture, just as God had warned them.  We have to examine ourselves, too, to ensure that our worship is still confined to the one true and living God, over everything else in our lives.  

Coincidentally, I went to the doctor yesterday.  I say coincidentally, because what he told me was that one of my ears was almost completely closed due to wax buildup.  The other one was completely open.  When reading through the lesson today, I couldn't help but think that's so often descriptive of where I am spiritually, as well.  I'm hearing clearly through one ear, but the other one is having a harder time.  One is open to God's Words to me, and the other one is trying to shut them out.  Life's struggles sometimes shut one of my ears to hearing what God is trying to say to me.  I want to dwell in my own thoughts, my own ideas and His Word doesn't seem to be getting through.  But when I take the time to "clean my ears out" and begin to hear Him through both ears (in "living stereo" as RCA used to say!), I get His balanced message, all completely logical and sensical for my life.  My carnal and limited thought process is infiltrated with His holy and infinite way of thinking that overrides the ways of selfishness and of the temporary.  

Jeremiah 6:10 "To whom can I speak and give warning?  Who will listen to Me?  Their ears are closed so they cannot hear.  The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it." 

This verse seems to describe our current culture to a tee...we are offended by God's Word and we find no pleasure in it.  But that's not the way it has to be.  

"Oh, Father in heaven, hear my prayer....clean out my ears and let me hear You, above all else!  Let me find my true and consistent pleasure in You."  As John Piper has stated, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."  He wants us satisfied, but He also knows that He is our only source of ultimate satisfaction, our Living Water that eternally springs forth.