I Hear You, but...

The dishes on the sides of our heads aren’t just for holding earrings and airpods. Our ears are one of the tools we use to communicate. We use them to hear. Sometimes, that’s all that they do. When we have a lot of noise coming at us from all directions, it’s hard to distinguish what to prioritize. If you’ve ever been in a space where multiple conversations are happening at the same time, then you know that feeling. You may pick up pieces of multiple conversations, but committing to any of the dialog is a challenge since we can’t efficiently divide our attention.

That’s how some people exist on a spiritual level as well. It’s difficult to hear God’s voice, let alone understand it!, when we’ve allowed so much noise and other voices to intrude on the conversation. Think about how easy it is for us to get distracted when we should have been studying or focusing on a task. It happened to me often. I’d be researching one thing and end up buried in a rabbit hole of nonsense after getting distracted by something else! That always shows me why it’s so important to be intentional about the time I spend in prayer or studying the word. I sometimes go outside of my home to do this because I find that uninterrupted time with just me and Jesus is so vital! 

If I want to hear something clearly, then I often need to first remove all the distractions that are disrupting what I hear. It’s like that moment when you are driving along down the road and you hear a peculiar sound. It makes you pause long enough to lower the volume on the radio so that you can tune in. It’s just like that with our spiritual ears. There is an instinct to understand what we hear. But in order to do it, we have to eliminate some of the distractions that are drowning out the sound.

Even when your music is the loudest, your ears seem to pick up on that one peculiar sound...

Once we learn to hone in on God’s voice when he is speaking to us, the work isn’t done. Now that you hear him, are you listening? That is, do you understand what you’re hearing? I heard this line in a movie once. There were two characters talking and the one gave the other a straightforward instruction. No parties! Clear and simple instruction. The other character then confirms that he heard the instruction. He follows this up by saying something along the lines of I hear you…but I’m not listening.

We find ourselves in similar situations when we don’t like what we hear. For some people, they initiate selective hearing. For others, they were to distracted to fully process what they heard, not to mention understanding it. We have to be intentional during those moments of quality time we spend with God. Yes, it might become easy enough to hear him when we learn how he speaks to us as individuals. But are we listening? Don’t just hear. There is a catchphrase in my line of work that is very apt. Listen to understand, not to respond. 

Stay Sunny!

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