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Praying to God and hearing from God We are told to pray and ask God for our daily needs. Many pray for God to give ear to their prayer, but what of when God asks us to listen and hear him? Ps 54:2 “Hear my prayer, O God; Give ear to the words of my mouth.” Ps 55:1-2 “ give ear to my prayer, O God, And do not hide Yourself from my supplication. Attend to me, and hear me; If we do not listen to him, will he listen to us? Of course he hears us, but, will he respond? But what of us hearing him? God speaks to us as a people and individuals. Ps. 5:1-3 “ Give ear to my words, O LORD, Consider my meditation. Give heed to the voice of my cry, My King and my God, For to You I will pray. My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up.” Deut. 32:1-3 “ Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As raindrops on the tender herb, And as showers on the grass. For I proclaim the name of the LORD: Ascribe greatness to our God.” Isa 51:4-5"Listen to Me, My people; And give ear to Me, O My nation”For law will proceed from Me, And I will make My justice rest As a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near,My salvation has gone forth, And My arms will judge the peoples; The coastlands will wait upon Me” Throughout the Old Testament we read of God asking, sometimes pleading with his people to listen to him. Joel 1:22“Hear this, you elders, And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in your days, Or even in the days of your fathers?” In Jesus’ day the people were led astray by those who challenged His words as the truth, and could not understand what His words meant. Today there is little difference, in fact there are more distractions and other matters that occupy us to not actually hear and listen to obey. In the latter days this becomes crucial, as Paul warns, in1 Timothy 4:1”the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith.”Our faith is directly tied to the Word that is written. Matt 13:13-14 at a certian point in his ministry He, Jesus took up a different way to explain, “ I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.” The fact is as human beings we all need healing of some sort, not just physically. It’s hard to be on our own, there is an active enemy who is trying to mislead us way when we hear the Word which is the truth that can separate us from what is false. The enemy is present to have us misunderstand, misinterpret God’s word. Without comprehension we ignore it, misapply it.Certain men and women are used In this endeavor,and they are abundant in our culture. Matt 13:18-19 “Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.”We do not hear because the words do not penetrate the soil, which is spoken of as our heart, there is an ongoing resistance to hear what is true because of our fallen nature and the enemy is at work to defeat the truth and what is the good that is coming from God. Consider that his Word is called bread that it is our daily spiritual nutrition. We ingest it as spiritual food which is turned into nutrition for our body; the Word is for our living a spiritual life pleasing unto him. John 6:52Jesus spoke of eating his flesh and blood. “The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to ea t?" thee didn’t understand the spiritual meaning, they misunderstood it as PHYSICAL, LITERAL. This is what he meant when he spoke in John 6:5 “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.John 6:57”he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.He further explains in 6:63-64 “ It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. Her meant to consume his life by eating and living his words. John 6:32-33My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’;John 6:41" I am the bread which came down from heaven." Matt 15:10 “He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand” Not only are we to hear but we are to understand his words so we can follow and be fruitful. “After confronting those who refused to believe, he said “Hewho is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God”(John 8:47). John later in his epistle echo this saying, “He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us . By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”( 1 John 4:6-7) Many think they are good with God without his Word. Some claim to speak new words from God, as prophets. 1 Cor. 2:5 “ our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” He preserved his Word, called the bible throughout history. Jesus continually quoted the Old Testament to explain it, and the apostles continually quoted Jesus. To keep in the faith we are told that “faith comes by hearing , and hearing by the word of God”(Rom 10:17). Jesus acknowledges and commends those in the tribulation that keep to his word. Rev. 3:8 Have “kept My word, and have not denied My name.” These are those who will give up their lives to hold to it (Rev.12:11). |
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