Learn How to Listen

1996

If we’ll just listen to God, if we’ll really tune in to see what God is trying to do with us, He is very capable of completing what He began in us. Do you know that? That this doesn’t rest on your shoulders to pull it off? You just need to know how to listen. If you will learn how to listen and you will yield, if you will soften that hard heart of yours, whoever you may be, in whatever situation may come up, and we all have numerous situations. If you’re sons, you’re going to have situations. If you’re truly sons rather than illegitimate children just fooling yourselves with some form of religion, if you’re truly born a second time of water and of the Spirit, you will certainly have situations that come up where He will discipline you and chasten you.

If you’re not bearing fruit 30, 60 and 100 fold right now, you are way out of His will, just for starters. You are way out of His will. If there aren’t 30, 60 and 100 people that would say, “This person has dramatically changed my life. They demonstrate the fruit and the life of Christ and they touch me whenever I’m with them. I see Christ. I’m pricked for the sin in my life, for the selfishness, for the foolishness, for the waste of time, for the misplaced affections, for the lack of insight that robbed an opportunity from happening that could have if I’d just been awake. Those sorts of things.

If people don’t have that deep sense of gratitude for the impacts you’ve had on their life, then you’re already outside of His will. Thirty, 60 and 100 fold. That’s His desire for you. Bearing fruit, much fruit. Showing yourselves to be His disciples. That’s a mark of being a follower of Jesus, is that we look like Him, we act like Him, we think like Him, we speak like Him. We see what He sees and we touch what He would touch, not just living our random Christian lives and then dying and going to the mansion over the hilltop. That was never God’s intention. Although generations have embraced that as a possibility because of their doctrines and things.

The thing that God really wants is a generation, a race of people, a tribe that walks in the same kind of life that Jesus does. The beautiful part about Hebrews 12 and related topics is that God, as a Father, as Jesus demonstrated, He wasn’t just Jehovah, Yaweh, El Shaddai. He wasn’t just some far off God, but He was actually a Father who cares for us and counts the hairs on our head. He knows all the stars by name and He knows all of us by name. And He loves us. Immensely. Individually as people, with all of our past weaknesses and flaws and failures and all the tears we’ve shed. Frustrations we’ve encountered as we’ve struggled with sin.

Notice that word, “the times you’ve struggled with sin.” God knows about that. That’s not a crime, to struggle with sin. It’s only a crime to give up and give in and throw in the towel. Struggling with sin isn’t a crime. That’s part of our inheritance, is that we’re drawing closer to Him, more dependent upon Him, and less dependent on ourselves, less critical of others. Not to say we’re lax or lazy. In fact we care all the more. As we struggle with sin, we care all the more for someone who is also struggling with sin. And even more for a person who doesn’t bother to struggle with sin. It breaks our heart.

All of these things tune us in to be able to walk as Jesus walked. It’s a precious thing. The hardship that He brings into our life. The struggle that He allows in our hearts, the tension in our hearts about a particular sin and how we’re going to view this sin. Are we going to blow it off? What are we going to do about it? Are we going to wrestle? Are we going to get on our faces before God and really deal with it and throw it before Him and confess our sins one to another if that’s what He’s calling us to do? All of these things are precious things, not to be rejected or despised or thrown into some category of second class Christianity. This is much of what it’s all about.

It’s a big job to change dodo birds like us into a race of people that will even judge angels, as Paul said. That’s a big job. There’s a lot that goes into a job like that. God’s working that in us. He left His Spirit until the work on earth is done. The Life and the Spirit, the very essence of who Christ Jesus was, the Spirit of Christ, was left to the sons of God for those that will listen, for those that will be willing to listen. The inheritance and the opportunities are immense.

I don’t care who you are or how hard you think your heart is and how deeply entrenched you think your sin is. He’s a father, He loves you and everything that pertains and frees us to life and to godliness has been granted to the saints. The inheritance that makes the angels stagger in awe has been granted to a race of lowly creatures like us. One step up from the chimpanzees. He has graced us with a knowledge of Him and His Son, the beauty of holiness, life and peace and grace and truth. He has left that inheritance to us if we will listen.

The biggest part of this thing, the discipline of the Lord is listening. To those that are trained by it, to those that are willing to watch and see something other than the rain falling on the just and the unjust, out of the simple things of life that hurt, out of the struggle with sin that hurts, to see something more than just, “Oh well. I’m being cheated,” or “this isn’t fair.” “Why God this and that?” Those sorts of cheap thoughts. He really wants our minds to be in tune with the spiritual realm and not just the seen realm.