Ears to Hear

Ears to Hear

Matthew 11:15

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear

              There are not a lot of people around that don’t have physically hearing ears.  So why did Jesus so often quote this phrase?  The eyes, the ears and the hearts that he sought in men were not their natural ones, but their spiritual ones.  A lot of people have rejected Jesus for generations, because He didn’t make sense to them intellectually.  They didn’t have spiritual ears. 

              God spoke through Ezekiel to the people of Israel in Ezekiel 12:2, “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of the house of the rebellious, who have eyes to see and see not, who have ears to hear and hear not, for they are a rebellious house.^”  Spiritual senses must be attuned to hear spiritual things.  Our spiritual sight and hearing are directly connected to the condition of our spiritual heart.  If we are hardened in matters of the heart, our spiritual hearing and sight will be impaired as well.  Many of us know how to listen with our ears, but we don’t know how to listen with our hearts.  Often words sound like one thing, but that is not the heart.  We often may wonder why we don’t hear from God when in fact He may be speaking to us all the time.  It is a rare thing to hear God’s audible voice from heaven, but He can speak to us in so many other ways.  He speaks through His Word, the still small voice of the Holy Spirit within our hearts, through circumstances, through others, through examples of others that we have and a number of ways.  Yet often we don’t hear the Lord speaking, because we are listening with our intellect rather than our heart.  That doesn’t mean that we only hear God through our emotions, because they are from the soul and can deceive us.  We have to get in touch with our spirits, our inner man, that inner voice that is speaking the mind, will and heart of God.   In John 8:47 Jesus  says,  “He that is of God will hear the words of God.”

              I remember times when the kids were growing up and they were constantly asking questions, “Can we do this or can we do that and so and so did this.”  As parents you know how emotionally draining children can be.  There were a lot of times that I just zoned them out.  I basically just shut them off.  They could be standing there saying, dad, dad, dad!  I had just shut them off mentally.  That was my way of coping, but at the same time I had shut off my involvement in their lives, as obnoxious as that could sometimes be.  I quit hearing them; my heart was hardened in that area.  We do the same thing to God.  Many times, like my children, we don’t really want to hear God.  He is speaking things to us that we don’t want to deal with.  Quite honestly, we like our way.  We like to do what we enjoy and when we enjoy it.  If that is not lining up with God’s plan, guess who we tend to ignore?  We end up shutting God out of our hearts.  When we close our hearts to God, we don’t just shut out a person, we shut out the love of God to our hearts and consequently the flow of His Spirit and love through us.  That ends up impacting not only our spiritual relationship, but our natural ones as well.  Many of us have done this same thing with our marriages and we are wondering why we don’t feel in love with that person anymore? Our heart connection is the key to our hearing and seeing.  If you want to really hear your wife, stop listening to just her words and listen to her heart.  Sometimes what we hear as just nagging, are pleas from their heart, saying “help me, appreciate me, care about me, communicate with me, love me.  I have needs that are desperately needing to be met.”

              If we want to hear again what God is speaking through His Spirit we have to open our hearts to Him.  We may be going through all the right religious protocol and yet totally missing Him.  Our relationship first must be a matter of the heart, before it has meaning though our works.  Our works must be the outflow of our heart relationship with Father; so many times we have gotten it backwards and try to use our works to find relationship. 

              If we ever want to come out of the wilderness and inherit the promises of God, we must reconnect our hearts with Father.  Deuteronomy 29:4 says, “Yet the LORD hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.”  A rebellious heart will keep us the prisoners of our circumstances, it will keep us in the rut of failure and it will leave our hearts lean and malnourished.  

              When the Holy Spirit spoke through John, in Revelation 3, He repeatedly said at the end of each exhortation, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”  Let us have the spiritual ears to hear what He is speaking to our hearts in this day, this hour and this minute.  Let us listen and obey.  Let us reestablish that heart connection that has become callused and cold.  In order to hear Him in this hour we must have that right heart condition.

Blessings,

#kent

Advertisement

I Have Declared the Former Things from the Beginning

I Have Declared the Former Things from the Beginning
Isaiah 48:3
I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did [them] suddenly, and they came to pass.

One of the ways that God reveals to us that He indeed is God and not some other object of our affection or worship is that He is all knowing. He knows from the beginning to the end and nothing is hid from Him. The book of Daniel shows us one example of this when Nebuchadnezzar had a disturbing dream. He was going to put to death all of his wise men, sorcerers, astrologers and soothsayers, because not only did he want them to tell him what the dream meant, he wanted them to tell him what the dream was. There was only one that could meet his request and that was Daniel after the Lord revealed it to him. Even the great Nebuchadnezzar had to acknowledge that God was God.
All through the Bible God has given a prophetic Word that spoke of what He would do and what would happen in the future. This is a testimony and witness to us to know that God is God. If it were not so, He says because of the hardness of our hearts, we would give credit to our idols. “Because I knew that thou [art] obstinate, and thy neck [is] an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; I have even from the beginning declared [it] to thee; before it came to pass I shewed [it] thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them. (Isaiah 48:4-5)”
Many of us have found ourselves in the captivity again of a worldly and religious system that has captivated our minds and thinking. We attempt to walk in Christ, not led by the Spirit, but led by men of natural minds, steeped in religious thinking and ways. The Lord is about to do what He has said in Daniel 12:3-4, “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”
Look for the Lord to begin to declare a thing in and through His people. The Lord is calling us out of Babylon and into Him. That Babylon is the religious tradition and kingdoms of men. Does that mean we aren’t suppose to go to churches? What it means is that God is raising up His true bride in the midst of her who has only had the outward appearance of holiness, but inwardly is full of abominations and wickedness. This is the day to tune your ear to the Spirit of God and begin to hear His voice. He will lead you into the place of true worship and return you to spiritual Jerusalem. He will give witness to your spirit when you are in the place of true communion with Him.
There is a stirring in my spirit that we are about to see a great increase in divine revelation and knowledge as the Lord begins to declare it through the spirit of His saints and increase revelation knowledge of Him. Look for Him to do it in you as you get quiet before Him and seek Him in the inner chambers of your heart. This is a revealing of Himself not to puff us up, but to further affirm in our hearts that we are His redeemed, called out of the world to declare and live unto the majesty of our God. Seals are being removed from the Book and the things shut up are being opened because this is the day of their unveiling.
“20 Leave Babylon, flee from the Babylonians! Announce this with shouts of joy and proclaim it.
Send it out to the ends of the earth; say, “The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob.” 21 They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split the rock and water gushed out. 22 “There is no peace,” says the LORD , “for the wicked.” (Isaiah 48:20-22)” God is calling us into a day of spiritual liberation. It is the day to get in touch with who we are, not as a religious people, but as God’s people. We belong to the organism of the body of Christ, not to the organization of religion. We are on the brink of the great things of God and we want to be in the flow of God’s Spirit when He unveils them. He has spoken His Word to us to prepare us and suddenly it will come to pass, what we have taken for granted and become complacent about. This is an hour to be stirred up and preparing your hearts for the Lord’s unveiling.

Blessings,
#kent

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am God
Psalms 46:10
Be still, and know that I [am] God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

One of the most difficult things for us to do in our busy lives with all of its demand is to really be still before the Lord. Even in our prayer life, don’t we tend to want to say our peace to God and then move on? Most times we don’t want to take the time just to be still in His presence, to listen for His voice and meditate on His wonder and greatness. Psalms 4:4 says, “Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah”
We tend do with God what many of us are guilty of doing with our loved ones, “I would really like to talk with you about it, but I’ve got to run. Maybe we can talk later.” Is that similar to the words that come out of our mouth sometimes? It is often really hard for us to be still, but until we do, we often don’t really hear the things we need to hear. Ecclesiastes 9:7 says, “The words of wise [men are] heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.” Even in our human and family relationships, we don’t really hear their hearts until we are willing to take the time to really interact with them and listen to them. The greatest mysteries, the greatest truths, the revelations we receive are most often heard in the quite and still places. Those are the places and times when our minds are at rest and peace and we take time just to listen and focus. We all really need that time every day with our God and with each other to stay in tune and in touch with the ones and the One we really love. Perhaps one of the reasons we don’t want to sit and be still is because, even subconsciously, we are running away from facing issues or confrontations or unpleasant dealings we really don’t want to deal with. Maybe the reason those things even exist in the first place is because we don’t take the time on a regular basis to talk, heart to heart, on a human and a God level. We want the quick fixes of our present society and culture to handle our relational problems, but they don’t. They still take the investment of our time and our true heart to really deal with them effectively.
Our lives are incredibly busy and full, but we need to set aside those times every day when we can just be still and know that God is God and be able hear, should He wish to speak to us. More than likely He is speaking to us, or at least trying to throughout our day, but we aren’t tuned in to see and hear Him working in our lives and circumstances. The way we get ears to hear, eyes to see and a heart that is tender before the Lord, is to be still and really know that He is God in our lives. Don’t neglect the valuable time it takes to get quiet and be still before the Lord.

Blessings,
#kent