A man can learn a lot when he listens.”
–Monty R. Garner (The Healer)
“Now the LORD came and stood and called as at other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel answered, ‘Speak, for Your servant hears.'”
–1 Samuel 3:10 (NKJV)
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“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” –Psalm 46:10 (ESV)
I wrote the other day about not seeking to run away or to go behind the walls of a monastery to be with God. Now, I will say–there is a time to be alone with Him. When things go helter-skelter in your life, when your normal, regular schedule turns into havoc, when the demands of everyday life start getting to you then it is time to be alone with God. The CEV puts it this way, “Our God says, ‘Calm down, and learn that I am God! All nations on earth will honor me.'”
Fenelon writes, “How rare it is that the soul is sufficiently stilled to let God speak! The least murmur of our foolish wishes, the least murmur of self-interest, confuses the message of the Spirit of God. We hear Him speaking and asking for something, but we have no idea what He is saying, and often we are glad not to guess. The least reservation, the least consideration of self, the least fear of hearing too clearly that God is asking for more than we want to give Him–any of these will disturb the Word within. Need we then wonder that so many people, even pious people, but still pleasure loving, full of foolish desires, of false wisdom, of complacency, cannot hear; and consider this inner Word the imagination of fanatics?”
The old Pogo comic strip comes to mind when Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and they are us.” We blame this, and that. We blame the environment or the circumstance. We blame someone else. Rarely do we want to look within ourselves to see the reason why we won’t take time to get alone with God. Fenelon brings out one important reason–we don’t want to hear Him too clearly, to hear what He is really asking of us. Listen, to be a friend of God we must listen for His voice, and then do His bidding. John Newton declared, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. He deals familiarly with them. He calls them not servants only, but friends; and He treats them as friends. He affords them more than promises, for He opens to them the plan of His great designs from everlasting to everlasting, shows them the strong foundations and inviolable securities of His favor towards them, the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of His love, which passeth knowledge, and the unsearchable riches of His grace.”
But we have to listen. We have to get alone with Him, and that doesn’t mean running to the mountains or the beach or the seclusion of walls. Then, now get this, then we must obey. Listening–then obeying.