What Are You Listening To?
Learning to recognize God’s voice when everything else is clamouring for our attention.
It takes discipline to listen with intention and focus, but are there benefits in doing so? Why do we so easily lose our focus?
Psalm 85:8 says in the New Living Translation:
“I will listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people. But let them not return to their foolish ways.”
There’s a certain intentionality when it comes to listening to the voice of the Lord. And I like the word carefully that the New Living Translation attaches to the word listen.
“I will listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying.”
When I record a reel or host a Zoom meeting, I shut off all the sounds in my apartment. My television, my computer, everything else gets silenced except for a couple of appliances and my air purifier, especially during forest fire season.
As I write, I often wear noise-cancelling headphones, sometimes with music playing in the background. The headphones are also helpful for blocking the ever-present traffic noise below. I live in a high-rise on a busy urban street.
However, even without the noise-cancelling headphones on, 95 percent of the time I never hear the traffic noise. Even the sirens have become nothing but white noise, while all the other sounds in my apartment take precedence.
But when a siren stops right outside my building, I notice. Something has changed in the background noise I normally tune out, and I instinctively pay attention.
Listening for the voice of the Lord requires that same sort of intentionality on our part.
Our world is full of noise, both internally and externally. We have our computers on, music playing, notifications going off on our devices and people talking in the background. And those are just the external noises!
Then our internal noises clamour for our attention: our cares, our concerns, the burdens we might be carrying and all the things on our to-do lists. All these things can race around in our minds at any given time.
So listening carefully to the Lord requires a bit of discipline and effort on our part. But the rewards are great. Just as it says in verse Psalm 84: 8:
“He speaks peace to his faithful people.”
There was a commercial in the 1990s for a cell phone company in the United States where the catchphrase was, “Can you hear me now?” Sometimes, I wonder if God is asking the same question of us.
I believe God is constantly speaking to His people, but are we really listening with the intention of hearing what He has to say?
There’s a great benefit when we do because He speaks peace to us. After all, who doesn’t need a little more peace in their life?
But please don’t misunderstand me. Not everything God says to us will necessarily be comfortable to hear. He might speak words of correction or conviction. He might encourage us to step past the chicken line and take some risks for Him. But underneath all those things is an undercurrent that carries us, and that is His peace.
Then comes the rest of the verse: “But let them not return to their foolish ways.”
Hearing is one thing. What we do with what we’ve heard is another. Ouch!
We can hear Him, receive His peace, and then turn around and give another voice more attention than His. Fear can get loud. Circumstances can get loud. Our own reasoning can get pretty noisy as well.
So the next time I’m tempted to turn around when things get a bit tricky and head back to the hills of my foolish ways, there’s a question I need to ask myself:
Where along the line did I lose my peace?
What happened that caused me to place the voice of something else at a higher priority in my life than the voice of the Lord?
When I realize I’ve stopped listening, I can remember what His peace felt like and lean in again to hear His voice.
“Speak Lord, I’m listening.”
Until Next Time,
Kath