Listening to God...

I had the honor of leading the Older Adult Sunday School class on Sunday morning. I like to say that I led rather than taught, because I am half the age of most of them and the amount of spiritual and life wisdom in that room was overwhelming. Overall, I was truly humbled to share the message God had placed upon my heart. But I was even more humbled to have them receive it like they did.

All week long, God was leading me to speak on how we hear Him. So, I spoke on how God speaks to our hearts in a quiet voice, even though we expect a vocalized form of communication. I began the lesson by reading through Psalms 29, of how God's voice thunders, shakes, and strips the bark off the cedars of Lebanon. But, I've never had Him speak to me that way, and all the years of wisdom in the room also agreed that they hear a quiet voice within them. So, we talked about the "Still Small Voice" after that.

During my lesson, God revealed something in one of the scriptures that I have read and heard many times before. Isaiah 30:21 says this:

...and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: "This is the way, Walk in it."

I have always considered that scripture to simply mean that God will direct our paths (the right ones) whenever we feel like we do not know which way to go. But, I've never gone much deeper than that. I've always stopped with the idea that we are bee-bopping along through life, and when we come to a place of uncertainty, all we have to do is listen to where God tells us to go, and walk in it. But is this really all there is? Just go through life and when your stumped go to God, just like when you turn to the back of a crossword puzzle book for the answers? Here's what He revealed to me through a co-worker:

There's this fellow I work with that is almost deaf. Before I knew his condition, I had already noticed that he was always looking to the left and/or alternating to the right anytime I talked to him. I thought he had a problem with making eye contact until someone told me he could hardly hear. It was then that I realized he was simply turning his head so that he would have a direct line from my mouth to his ear drum. It took me a while to get used to this, but realized that the good thing about it is that he was paying enough attention to me that he would turn his head and aim his ears at me so he wouldn't miss anything.

So what about how this relates to listening to God? Sure, God is always talking to us and directing our paths and hoping that we will listen. But the sad fact is, we don't always listen to Him either by choice, or because of the millions of distractions and endless chatter thrown up by the world and the enemy that cause us to be hard of hearing. God revealed this about hearing Him:

To hear Him, we must focus on Him by aiming our whole self at Him so that we will not be distracted and so that His voice will have a straight line from His mouth to our hearts.

This is illustrated through the scripture by turning to the left or the right so that we are in direct "ear-shot" of His mouth. Now I realize that to better hear God, I gotta' be like my buddy at work and act as if I'm hard of hearing. No more "Selective Listening" as my wife called it one time...