Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.

• Isaiah 50:4

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

• Luke 6:27-28

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

• Luke 6:46-49

“Have we learned the habit of listening to what God says? Have we added this resolute hearing in our practical life? We may be able to give a testimony as to what God has done for us, but does the life we live evidence that we are not listening now, but living only in the memory of what we once heard? We have to keep our ears trained to detect God’s voice, to be continually renewed in the spirit of our mind. If when a crisis comes we instinctively turn to God, we know that the habit of hearkening has been formed. At the beginning there is the noisy clamour of our own misgivings; we are so taken up with what we have heard that we cannot hear any more. We have to hearken to that which we have not listened to before, and to do it we must be insulated on the inside.
“’He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.’ Once a week at least read the Sermon on the Mount and see how much you have hearkened to it-‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you’; we do not listen to it because we do not want to. We have to learn to hearken to Jesus in everything, to get into the habit of finding out what He says. We cannot apply the teachings of Jesus unless we are regenerated, and we cannot apply all His teachings at once. The Holy Spirit will bring back to our remembrance a certain word of our Lord’s and apply it to the particular circumstances we are in, the point is-are we going to obey it? ‘Whosoever … heareth my sayings, and doeth them … ‘When Jesus Christ brings a word home, never shirk it.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (November 17, from Grow up into Him)

“In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.”

• Rudyard Kipling, A Time for Prayer

Rev. Chambers makes the point clearly here.  He causes me to think of the poem of varied provenance, quoted with the Kipling version, we hearken to God in the hard times, but we forget God when the trouble is over.

But if we do not incline our ears to God, we will never hear Him.  And when we only incline our ears to God in the tough times, the “tough times” often make so much noise that we could not hear God’s voice.

But if we incline our ears and listen in peaceful times, we can get to know God’s voice.  When Jesus made the “I AM” statement about being the good shepherd, He said that those sheep that were His hear His voice, but do we train ourselves to hear His voice all the time?

Kipling’s poem is “A Time for Prayer” but Paul wrote the Thessalonians and told them to pray continually.  It is not that any time is a good time for prayer; it is that ALL time is THE time for prayer.

And when we pray, we need to shutdown our side of the conversation.  Too often, we talk about what we want, and maybe a little about what we need.  We say some rehearsed lines of praise and thanks, and then we say “Amen” and get back to what we were doing.

We never hang around, being quiet, to hear God’s voice.

But if we can do that in the easy times, the good times, we will know how to hear God’s voice in spite of the shouts from the “bad times.”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.