Are You Listening???

Would others consider you a hearer or a listener? Any parent of a two year old or a teenager, for that matter, knows that there is a difference between the two. Most children only start listening when their parent use their full names! Right? This week I found myself guilty of doing the same. I heard what I thought I heard, but there were many clues that I had missed. Therefore, I didn’t have the full story, and I needed to “back track” and really “listen”. I needed to listen with my heart.

I know that preachers will work on a sermon with one particular person or group of people in mind. When they aren’t there that Sunday, they will switch the lesson because it was just that important. Then, the next Sunday, that person would come out after the sermon and say, “I sure wish “so and so” could have heard that. They needed that one!” It may seem funny, but it happens. We hear, but instead of applying the lesson to ourselves, we apply it to everyone else. I loved the name of Ivan Stewart’s book, “Go Ye Means Go Me.” How often do we leave personal evangelism to “someone else?” We are to “visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction.” (James 1:27) Are you listening? We are to “not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting each other, and so much the more, as we see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25) “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread. .” (Acts 20:7) The early church partook of the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week – how many weeks have a first day? Do you only need to go to church on Easter and/or Christmas?

Are you guilty of “hearing what you want to hear?” Do you need to “turn up the volume” when it comes to listening to God’s Word? Do you need to listen with your heart and not just your ears? God bless, Courtney