The Devotion of Hearing

"The way in which I show God that I neither love nor respect Him is by the obtuseness of my heart and mind towards what He says" -- Oswald.

Ouch. Between the Scripture passage and Oswald's daily words, I always find My Utmost to be instructive and my time here invariably feels well spent, but today's message is like the stiletto of which he wrote on Thursday. I am pierced. I do not have the devotion of hearing. My mind and heart are dull to God's voice. And it is not because he has not been speaking.

Why have I not been hearing?

• I have not been expecting him to speak to me. As I have addressed in earlier posts, my thinking about revelation is partially responsible. I have not allowed that God could speak to me in any way other than Bible reading/Bible teaching and perhaps, at a distant second, through nature. Even here, I distrusted my own interpretation because, as Scripture says, the heart is deceitfully wicked. Perhaps I would only hear what I wanted to hear.
• I have not left space for listening to God. I place a high value on productivity -- getting things done. When I'm not getting things done, I tend to escape into other worlds -- books, movies, Facebook. Then there's the noise in my head -- the constant chewing of the cud -- What did that person mean? Could she have misunderstood what I meant? Replay compliment #2. Replay and replay and replay insult #4. I need to cultivate solitude and a quiet brain, to lay aside the constant critique of my performance.
• I am always afraid of condemnation. What if God is not pleased with me? Can I bear to hear that?
• I have not trained myself to recognize his voice -- to distinguish the shepherd from those who would lead me astray; to isolate the still, small voice from the earthquake or the mighty wind.

My assignment: Begin to take advantage of already established patterns of solitude -- the ride to and from work, for example. Turn off the radio and invite God to speak to me. Use the daily Scripture passages as a starting place. Ask him to breathe life into the words so that they speak to me throughout the day. Come to him boldly under the assumption that I am loved. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

It is a start.

Barbara