Inspiration #39
Luke 8:8b AMP
As He said these things, He called out, He who has ears to hear, let him be listening and let him consider and understand by hearing!
Did you hear me? Many parents ask their children this question all the time, but the reality of the situation is: they probably didn’t hear you. They’ve listened to you, but they didn’t hear you. To hear or not to hear? That is the question. To God, it’s the same way with us.
Oftentimes, people attend church services and listen to the words of a song and the listen to the speaker’s sermon (and I’m stressing “listen” for a reason.) However, these people walk away from service with the same snotty attitudes as they came. Sometimes, some even leave the service worse than they came. In the Scripture verse above, Jesus gave the reason for this in what I like to call—The Hearing Process.
In order to say that you’ve heard, several things have to take place. First one would need to listen, which is actively paying attention to the words being spoken. To listen, you cannot busy yourself with other things as you will only hear selectively and that’s some of the problems of why people generally don’t hear. They’ve only listened selectively to what a person is saying. After you’ve listened you then should take what the person has said into consideration and contemplate or meditate over it until what they’ve said has become clear in your mind. This is the area that most people ignore. Many a times, people fail to hear what someone else is saying because they do not even consider what that person has said. This mean purposefully sitting down and thinking about what they’ve listened to. Sometimes, this phase can happen fairly quickly if you automatically agree with the person speaking, but still you should always consider and contemplate everything as that’s only wise. As you contemplate, normally understanding will come. Either you will understand why you believe what you believe over what that other person is saying; or, you will come to understand why that person believes what they believe and why you should alter your belief to theirs. Once, all three of the aforementioned steps have taken place then one can say that they’ve heard something. As a result, hearing produces action.
Are you listening or hearing today? After all, “faith (right believing) comes by hearing and hearing the word of God” (Romans 10:17).
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