The Discipline of Hearing

Verse:

Matthew 10:27

"Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops."

Lesson:

1. Sometimes God puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to teach us to hear and obey Him.

2. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and God puts us into "the shadow of His hand" until we learn to hear Him (Isaiah 49:2).

3. "Whatever I tell you in the dark ..."

pay attention when God puts you into darkness, and keep your mouth closed while you are there.

4. Are you in the dark right now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? If so, then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood

darkness is the time to listen.

5. Don't talk to other people about it; don't read books to find out the reason for the darkness; just listen and obey.

6. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light.

7. After every time of darkness, we should experience a mixture of delight and humiliation.

8. If there is only delight, I question whether we have really heard God at all. We should experience delight for having heard God speak, but mostly humiliation for having taken so long to hear Him!

9. Then we will exclaim, "How slow I have been to listen and understand what God has been telling me!" And yet God has been saying it for days and even weeks.

10. But once you hear Him, He gives you the gift of humiliation, which brings a softness of heart

a gift that will always cause you to listen to God now.

Most Meaningful Statement:

'darkness is the time to listen'

Thoughts :

1. Many times when we get put into the dark, we take it negatively and feel that God is punishing us or has 'left us' alone in a dark place.

2. However, God sometimes puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to actually teach us to hear and obey Him.

3. We should actually pay attention when God puts us into darkness, and keep our mouth shut while we are there. How can we hear God when we keep complaining or moaning?

4. The other thing is we should not just talk to other people about it; or read books to find out the reason for the darkness; we should just listen and obey.

The Devotion of Hearing

Verse:

1 Samuel 3:10

"Samuel answered, ‘Speak, for Your servant hears’."

Lesson:

1. Just because I have listened carefully and intently to one thing from God does not mean that I will listen to everything He says.

2. I show God my lack of love and respect for Him by the insensitivity of my heart and mind toward what He says.

3. If I love my friend, I will instinctively understand what he wants. And Jesus said, "You are My friends ..." (John 15:14).

4. Have I disobeyed some command of my Lord's this week? If I had realized that it was a command of Jesus, I would not have deliberately disobeyed it.

5. But most of us show incredible disrespect to God because we don't even hear Him. He might as well never have spoken to us.

6. The goal of my spiritual life is such close identification with Jesus Christ that I will always hear God and know that God always hears me (see John 11:41).

7. If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God all the time through the devotion of hearing. A flower, a tree, or a servant of God may convey God's message to me.

8. What hinders me from hearing is my attention to other things. It is not that I don't want to hear God, but I am not devoted in the right areas of my life. I am devoted to things and even to service and my own convictions.

9. God may say whatever He wants, but I just don't hear Him. The attitude of a child of God should always be, "Speak, for Your servant hears."

10. If I have not developed and nurtured this devotion of hearing, I can only hear God's voice at certain times.

11. At other times I become deaf to Him because my attention is to other things

—

things which I think I must do. This is not living the life of a child of God. Have you heard God's voice today?

Most Meaningful Statement:

If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God all the time through the devotion of hearing.

Thoughts :

1. Often we make ourselves too busy to hear God. That is why the devotion of hearing is so important to us in this modern age.

2. We don't hear because our attention is drawn to the cares of daily life. Our hearing gets clouded by the din of our busy lives, and we totally miss the point. Why busy ourselves with the temporal when we are supposed to pay attention to the eternal?