Hearing His Voice #145

We live by believing and not by seeing.

2 Corinthians 5:7

If you are highly skilled at every aspect of your job except one, which aspect will get most of your attention? If you are able to cross off nine out of ten items on your to-do list, which task will you focus on? If your child brings home a report card with five A’s and one F, which grade will you focus on? Human beings have a tendency to focus on what’s wrong or lacking, not on successes and strengths. We are drawn to whatever needs to be fixed. And an alarming side effect of that tendency is to see things much more negatively than they really are.

That carries over into our approach to hearing God. One word of correction from Him seems to outweigh ninety-nine words of encouragement. And one unanswered question—about direction, desires, or anything else—seems to get more of our attention than all the direction and answered prayers He has already given. The result is an unfortunate bias toward what we see (or rather, what we don’t see) and a disbelief and neglect of what He has already said. This inhibits our hearing anything else from Him.

One of the keys to hearing God is believing and acting on what we’ve already heard. The good listener focuses on what God says rather than what He doesn’t say. We want God to reveal His will to us, and He will. But He gets to choose the chronology and unfold His plan layer by layer. It does not help us to rebel against this process or try to rush it. An obsession with what He hasn’t said blocks our ears to what He is currently saying. But an obsession with what He has said and is currently saying opens our ears to discover even more of what He wants us to know. We live by believing whatever we have heard of His voice.

Lord, like faithful priests and prophets of old, I want none of your words to fall to the ground unheeded in my life. I commit to being diligent—not legalistic, but focused—about what You have already said.