There is listening or listening. On Sunday my friend was talking about how her husband was in pain. She gave a name to what he was suffering from but because it had a long medical name, I didn’t really listen. When I pray for him now it would be better if I could name what he has before God. I could then google and pray in a more informed way. As I explained the other day to you, as a child I didn’t listen properly and ended up in the wrong blackberry field. I was listening but not listening.
The Israelites were no better. Ezekiel is told in Ezekiel 2:7 ‘You must speak My words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen.’ We have a God who speaks, speaks to us through nature, by His written word and by the message of others and sermons. Our God is not a silent God, He is not an absent God. He say ‘I have spoken.’ It is not God’s speaking that is lacking, but our listening. We have cloth ears. Properly listening involves obedience, that is what we are not always happy about. To obey will involve us changing our ways, doing and saying things that are out of our comfort zone. Change is costly.
‘Everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house on the rocks. Matthew 7:24