"The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
1 Samuel 3:10 (NIV)
The connection between our hearts and our ears is made crystal clear by our Lord’s parable of the soil. Just as a sower places the seed onto the ground, so our Lord places His Word in our hearts. The Word gets into us through our ears and our eyes; they are the entry point of God’s Word into our hearts. This makes LISTENING so important! I suppose that God could have come up with another way to change our hearts; we seem to pray that God would miraculously change our loved ones hearts, however the Bible is very clear from the very first account of Adam and Eve in Genesis though to Revelation 22:17, that God has chosen to do His work in our hearts through speaking to us, and waiting for us to LISTEN or as our Lord says: “have EARS to HEAR”.
Adam was given a verbal instruction – he didn’t have EARS to HEAR; he didn’t LISTEN. The Bible tells us that he LISTENED to his wife, instead of listening to his God. The Bible ends with the Spirit and the bride (the church) calling, "COME. Accept the free gift of life", and yet only those who have EARS to HEAR will come.
We want a special sign. We want God to split the heavens and reveal His power; bring us to our knees and yet, the way God has chosen to bring His grace into our lives is through us using our EARS to LISTEN, our MINDS to UNDERSTAND, and our HEARTS to RECEIVE His life-giving Words. This seems so basic of a truth that we don’t talk about it much. We take the written Word for granted. We take our assembly for granted, and to our shame we take the Holy Spirit for granted.
The grace of God to make His Words available to us in our own language is mind boggling. Why would He bother speaking to us at all when the majority of what He says we ignore? Yet He speaks and speaks, tenderly and softly.
How did you start this morning with the Words of God? Did you check your email, your Twitter, your Facebook? Did you sit and listen to your kids or spouse talk to you about their day? Did you turn on CNN and listen to the headlines? None of these things are bad, but there is something much better! Oh that we learn from this little boy Samuel; that we may rise in the morning and open the Bible, say to the LORD “Speak for your servant is listening” and then READ, UNDERSTAND and RECEIVE His Words into our hearts!
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