We Need To Hear God
- Now Think On This
by Steve Martin
“My
son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.”
(Proverbs
4:20 Complete Jewish Bible)
How often
do you need direction? Ever take a wrong turn because the GPS or Google maps app
led you to a dead end road? It has done it to me.
Do you
ever need wisdom to know what is the right thing to do, when to do it and how
to do it? Probably everyday if we admit it.
As it happens
often, I personally have to choose to give the Lord the opportunity to speak to
me, so who and what I hear is coming from Him. Yes, He is speaking – through
His Word, by way of other people sharing a thought with me, or having His Holy
Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh in Hebrew) drop a word in my brain at any given moment.
If I am spiritually open, I will know it is Him.
Choosing
to hear the Lord is up to each individual. Being raised a Roman Catholic, I
thought it was the priest’s job to hear God. If God wanted to say something to
me, of course He’d tell the priest and I’d hear it during his little sermonette
given once a week at Sunday Mass. I could just sit back and let the man of the
cloth do it. He was closer to God, right? (While at the University of Northern
Iowa in the fall of 1973, my one and only year of college at the age of 18, the
Lord revealed Himself to me big time. I then divinely understood what He meant
when He told Peter Who the Rock was. It was Jesus Himself.)
For the “Protestants”,
those having a pastor or teacher of the Bible can easily expect him to just tell
you what to do during your weekly meeting. So why read your Bible or pray daily
during a daily quiet time with the Lord? Let someone else do it for you. Or so
many mistakenly think.
We can
allow the constant onslaught of noise to so occupy our thoughts that even when
He does speak we may not know it. That is our loss. It will cost us now and
later.
The
Almighty God, Creator of the universe, wants to communicate with His children.
He desires to give us direction and wisdom, but we must give Him a quiet break
in our lives to be able to hear Him.
It takes
time to learn to hear the Lord’s voice. It is a discipline we must have. Being
able to discern when He speaks is an ongoing process, even as we learned to
listen in our youth. As a young child growing up, given time over the months
and years, each child becomes accustomed to the sound of their parents’ voices.
I heard once that even the unborn baby begins to recognize the voice of their
mother. They respond accordingly when she talks. (Yet another reason to protect
the unborn in their mother’s womb at any stage of their living growth.) So it
is with the Lord. It takes time, but we can learn to hear His voice.
I often find
myself during the day asking the Lord for help in my office accounting work for
three businesses. It becomes especially necessary as the years have gone by and
my memory banks do not seem to be as easily able to access the info needed. I
like the joke I heard once of the aged one who said, “It takes a little longer
to get the answer to a question nowadays. With all the information I have packed
in my mind, those memory banks have more to process through.”
We need
to hear God for our own personal lives. We need to hear God for our families.
We need to be a part of the “working” Body of Christ, that rises up in our
culture and declares His truth, opposing the deception rampantly spreading
throughout the world. Only by hearing His voice will we be able to do it.
For the congregation
we are connected to, we need to hear God. For the nation we abide in, we
desperately need to know what the Lord is saying, so we can hear, obey and move
forward with His directives.
Hearing
God is especially more true today as His written Word has been replaced in all
areas of society, including our government and the arts. Knowing what is now
going on in the educational system, which presses upon our children’s minds a
godless, humanistic, crumbling foundation; and Islamic and other false religions
subtlety and blatantly showing up in text books and teachers’ lessons - we have
got to hear the Lord, so we can act
properly, and be sure our kids know the truth, and are raised right!
I
encourage you to do whatever it takes for you to hear God. My practice is to
give Him the first hour of the day. In order to do that I personally have to
cut back the time I stay up at night watching TV. It is worth it, as He shares
His heart with me in the morning hours.
How about
you? Do you want to hear the Lord speak to you? Then give Him that time to do
so. Believe me, He is waiting and willing to speak to you.
Now think
on this,
Steve
Martin
Founder
Love For
His People. Inc.
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of the Father in the nations.
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Now
Think On This #185 “We Need To Hear God” by Steve Martin
Date:
In the year of our Lord 2015 (10.09.15) Friday at 6:30 pm in Charlotte, NC
All
previous editions of Now Think On This can be found on this
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