Be A Better Listener

Hosea 9:7-8 - The days of punishment are coming, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this. Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac.  The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God.

 

Hosea had to tell the people to rejoice no more. He had to tell them that God had put up with all the disobedience and adultery of his Temple and words that he was going too.  God was going to allow a time of great oppression and captivity to teach them how to love him again. He had sent so many prophets to warn them…but they turned the words they heard into what they wanted to hear.

 

It is hard for me to grasp the full measure of the words in this chapter.  God was going to turn his back on his people…because he couldn’t stand the pain they caused his heart to feel.  The people’s selective hearing had caused them to wander so far away from the truth that God had to allow something drastic in their lives to wake them up to the promises they had made to him.

 

I needed this reminder this morning to guard against the selective hearing that damaged the Israelites relationship with God so badly.   God speaks to us in so many ways that is it sometimes hard to discern just what is God speaking…and just what satan inserts to confuse me. For satan will spare no tricks to try and keep our hearing impaired.

 

 

It is the faith that we develop by seeking God in Bible study and prayer that helps us hear his words clearly.  It is that same faith that tells our heart just what God wants us to do with what we read in our studies and hear God tell us in those prayers. It is the godly friends…the teachers he has placed in our pathways….and the pastors that he has placed in our churches that will teach us how to listen just to God.

 

Father…thank you for the reminder that you love us enough to keep speaking your purpose and will in our lives until we open our ears fully to your voice. Forgive me for the times that I have allowed confusion to abound because I have failed to filter out the world and satan’s tricks.   Help me this morning to learn to hear your voice only.  Help me to learn to listen…to all that you have to say to me ….so I can do what you placed me here to do.  Amen.