Tuesday June 12, 2018

 

A recent scientific study proves what most women have been complaining about forever, that most men suffer from a condition known as selective hearing. It’s not that women are exempt, but rather, that it is more prevalent in men than it is in women. Contrary to what you may believe however, selective hearing is not a bad thing. Selective hearing is the brain’s ability to filter out regularly recurring sounds. For example, a person living next door to an airport blocks out the sound of planes landing and taking off. Or a person having a conversation in a busy restaurant manages to filter out all the other sounds and conversations happening around them. The reason why some women may think that selective hearing is a bad thing is because their companion’s brains have developed the ability to filter out their voices in order to listen to something or someone else, like the sports commentator on the television.

 

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. – Revelation 3:20 NIV

 

In the verse you just read, Jesus is standing outside knocking on the door of the church of Laodicea, he is calling out asking to be let in. How is it that no one hears him? These are church people, if anyone ought to hear God’s voice it should be them. But, like all talents and abilities, they can be used for good or bad. The same is true concerning selective hearing, you can use it to listen to God or you can use it to filter him out. You can filter him out like the person living near an airport filters out the sounds of the planes. Or, you can choose to focus on God and block out all the sounds and conversations around you so that you can hear his voice. Hearing God’s voice will require you to open the door of your heart and it will require that you schedule a time and a quiet place to pray and read his word.

 

Three ways of using selective hearing to hear God’s voice:

 

1. 1.  You need to believe that God wants to speak to you.

 

For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. – Job 33:14 NLT

 

If you don’t believe that God wants to speak to you, you’ll probably never hear his voice.

 

     2.  You need to believe that God cares about you.

In the books of Matthew and Luke, Jesus says that God cares about us so much that he even knows how many hairs we have on our heads. He knows how many you have, how many have fallen off, and even what your original hair color was.

 

     3.   You need to believe that God wants to answer your questions.

 

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt… – James 1:5-6 NIV