A Listening Heart - The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional
A Listening Heart
The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.” Psalm 32:8
Sometimes we approach prayer like the woman who made an appointment with a physician because she was having health problems. When it was her turn, she went in to the examining room and told him her symptoms. But before the doctor could give her a diagnosis or treatment plan, she ran out of the room and went on to the next appointment in her schedule book. In doing so, she missed the very solution and help she needed.
Prayer, the dialogue between us and God, isn’t just about what we say to him. If it were, it would be a one-way conversation. There’s also the listening part of dialogue. When I’m having a conversation with a friend at Starbucks, each of us wants to hear what the other person has to say. So we talk, and we also listen to each other.
I don’t know about you, but I can be so caught up in the petition part of prayer that I don’t allow God to get a word in edgewise. The Lord has much to say to us if we will just listen. Sometimes God speaks through his written Word. Other times, he speaks to us through a glorious sunset or a night sky spangled with stars: “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship” (Psalm 19:1). We may hear him through a sermon, or we may recognize his whisper during the silence of our devotional time or as we walk on a snow-covered road. God speaks in times of joy, but it seems we most often pay attention and hear him most clearly in times of anxiety or pain. C. S. Lewis observed that pain “is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
One thing is sure: When God speaks from his heart to yours, when you hear him and obey, something changes. Healing begins, or an attitude is transformed. A relationship is restored, or we receive needed direction. And sometimes his whispers are meant simply to reassure us of his love. Will you listen to what God has to say to you today? —CHERI
Lord, I confess I’m not the best listener, either to other people or to you. Forgive me for sharing my petitions and then not tuning in to what you have to say. Give me the faith to believe you will speak to me. I surrender to you anew today.
God is whispering to us well nigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God. [He] is always whispering to us, only we do not always hear because of the noise, hurry, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on.
—FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER (1814–1863), BRITISH HYMN WRITER AND THEOLOGIAN
