Power of Hearing

Key Scripture "Give ear and hear (listen and obey) my voice.  Listen and hear my speech.

…This also comes from the Lord of Hosts who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.” Isaiah 28:29

Power Point:

Recently the Lord has been talking to me about “silence”. I kept being reminded of the song by Simon and Garfunkel entitlIed, “The Sound of Silence”. In this song, which originated with a dream, the silence is not total lack of sound, it is not being able to hear God’s voice. The people are walking aimlessly in a subway tunnel. Here are some of the words:

People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening.

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sounds of silence.

When you drive through a tunnel, you usually find that your cell phone won’t work or perhaps even your radio. The tunnel isolates you from the signals in the air.  There’s no reception. I think that’s what this song is talking about. The only thing that lit up the tunnel where the people walked were the neon lights of the world; the words of the world’s wisdom; the sounds that stole their attention from God’s voice.

Are you in a place where you are so busy listening to the “noise” around you that you can’t hear God?  I was reading this morning about King Jehoshaphat, the son of King Asa.  Asa was a godly king who instituted great reforms in Israel. In II Chronicles 15, the Lord sends a prophet to meet Asa and tell him, “The Lord is with you while you are with Him.  If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.”  Those words were a real encouragement to Asa and he truly saw God defeat other armies. Then one day, Asa developed a disease in his feet. For some reason it did not occur to him, to seek the Lord. Instead he sought his own physicians. I have heard many times that this verse is a good reason to not go to the doctor when you are ill. But here is what my Bible says about it.

“The physicians were probably sorcerers or medicine men who operated with curses and magic, which is why they should not have been sought.” Asa made a bad choice didn’t he? He sought ungodly counsel and he ended up losing everything. Was it God’s fault? No. It was Asa’s choice. He had heard God but he didn't listen.

Asa’s ears were filled with the sounds of the “neon” voices around him, voices of people who were not saying anything worthwhile. How sad. The word for “hear” in Hebrew carries an amplification of what we would normally think it could mean. Instead of just hearing with our ears, God says, that we are to hear, listen to, consent to and obey what He tells us. In fact, James tell us “Don’t just listen. Do what he tells you.”  You do that when you hear, listen and obey.

I will be quite honest and agree that sometimes God’s counsel doesn’t seem to make sense in the short term. But I truly have found that it always makes sense in the long term. Are you listening to His excellent and wonderful counsel? Then I guess that means that you are doing what He tells you to do. Right? Right!

Power Thought:

If we don’t act on what He tells us we’re not really listening.