1 Samuel 3:9 …Speak, LORD; for they servant heareth.
Explore why you should not disrespect God and the importance of listening to Him in every conversation you have.
“We don’t consciously disobey God, we simply do not heed Him.” – Oswald Chambers
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, who stopped to answer their phone? Did you keep talking?
Have you ever been talking to someone who kept looking at their phone the whole time you talked? Did you keep talking?
Have you ever been on the phone with someone and they went so quiet, you thought you might be muted? Did you keep talking?
Have you ever been speaking to someone and have them roll their eyes at you? Did you keep talking?
Have you ever tried to have a serious conversation with someone, and they wouldn’t sit down and stop what they were doing? Did you keep talking?
Have you ever been so busy that you couldn’t answer your phone when it rang?
How many times have we done those things to our Father?
How many times have we kept talking or kept on with our busyness, when the Lord was tapping us on the shoulder?
Can I ask you; do you keep Him on the frontlet of your mind? Is He frontmost in your thoughts? Are you waiting, even in your busyness, to hear from Him, all the day long? Do you look for Him in all the mundane tasks you have to do daily? Do you include Him in the details of your life? Are your eyes and ears truly open to what the Spirit has to say? Or are you ignoring Him, until you have time, or until it’s convenient?
Have you positioned yourself in such a way that your instinct, is to do the Will of God? It seems to me, the more obedient we are in His tiny unctions, the more He will give them.
Luke 19:17 …because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.
So many of us are starving to hear Him, yet we won’t do what we need to do to hear Him. Oswald used the word “heed”.
Heed is a really neat word! It can mean “to discern clearly” …here’s the good part; it can also mean “to experience”.
Heeding the voice of the Lord is quite an experience. Listening and discerning, followed by obedience to Him is the height of experiences for the believer. It should be what we live for… to be useful.
I’ll never forget taking a walk on lunch break, walking back up to the building, with my headphones blaring in my ears, and seeing a man I knew of, but basically ignored, sitting on a bench at a picnic table and hearing as clear as day, the Lord say; “He’s open to Me.” I yanked my headphones off, looked around to see if anyone was close to me and frankly, to see if anyone else heard it. Then I looked up, and said; “What!??” And the Lord said it again, even softer. ”Oooh, okay,” I actually said out loud.
Now, I could have turned my headphones up to drown out the Voice. I could have even kept my headphones on and not pulled them off to be sure Who It was that I heard. I could have convinced myself that I was hallucinating. I could have allowed my own feelings on the issue to keep me from doing what God told me. I could have been too busy to stop. I could have simply ignored Him.
That was only the start of my heeding God, towards that man, whom I would end up marrying, per that Still Small Voice.
Both, my husband and I know that we would not have made it through the last four years without one another, had I not listened for, heeded to, and obeyed that one day. God knew what He was doing, and I would have totally missed it, had I been too busy to listen that one day.
In the verse from Samuel, that was the third time God spoke to him before Eli helped Samuel to understand Who it was that was calling him by name.
Note though, Samuel was listening. He did hear all three times. He just didn’t know Who it was.
Beloved, I encourage you to first have a heart like Samuel, one that is listening.
But not only a heart that hears, and listens, but one that will stop the world around you- to heed. (To heed- to discern, to experience the Voice of your God.)
Brethren let’s not be too busy to answer His calls. Let’s not be so caught up in this life that we ignore our Maker and King, of this world and the next.
It’s interesting in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 we are told to “pray without ceasing” and in verse 19 we are told “quench not the Spirit”. Those two verse, if heeded and obeyed, will help you to never be disrespectful to the heavenly Father.
Let us pray without ceasing. Let us keep Him on the frontlet of our hearts and minds. Let us ever be thinking about the blessing of entreating Him, should He make His Holy Presence known in the busyness of our life.
He is not rude. He will not force His way into your conversation. But you can start inviting His Presence into every detail of your life by simply talking with Him about it, praying for His guidance through the tiniest of the details, and yielding, like Samuel, and telling Him that you are listening for any instruction that He might speak. He loves you. Please don’t ignore Him or be too busy for Him.
