Daily Devotional For Monday, February 24, 2025
Listening has become a lost art. One of the reasons is our attention spans have been conditioned to be less due to media and digital technology. We want all our answers now and we want what we want when we want it. We have become an impatient culture. We fuss at red lights waiting for them to change or we fuss because a red light caught us. We fuss at slow drivers and we fuss at excessively fast drivers.
Having said all of that, the psalmist writes this from God in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (ESV). Be still. Stop! Take a moment to focus and listen to God. We are the people of God. We can’t be that if we are not listening to the Lord. This was Moses’ challenge to the Hebrews in Deuteronomy 27:9-10, “Then Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying, ‘Be silent and listen, O Israel! This day you have become a people for the Lord your God. (10) You shall therefore obey the Lord your God, and do His commandments and His statutes which I command you today’” (NASB).
Moses told the Hebrews to “be silent and listen.” Many if not most people today do not listen. While you are talking to them, they are looking at either their watch or phone for messages. In other words, while they are giving the impression they are listening to you, their minds are elsewhere. It gives the impression, “This is more important to me than you.” Sometimes we are the same way with God. We hear, but we do not listen. Parents often say this to their children and sometimes even spouses say it to their spouse.
None of us is born with the desire to obey God’s commands. This means we have to be intentional to hear and to listen to the Lord. It takes embarking upon a relationship with Jesus, then spiritual growth, and some hard lessons to realize that life is better when we do it God’s way. None of us will ever perfect obedience in this lifetime, but we should still have it as our goal. What about you?
Do you really intend to be obedient to the Lord? Or do you think your way is just as good or better than His? Do you submit yourself to Him every day? Or do you do what seems right in your own eyes? Do you live with the awareness that He knows your every thought and deed? Or do you push the envelope and hope He will not notice? Learning to be obedient is an important part of growing up in the Lord. It will be a lifelong challenge, but it’s a challenge that will bring great purpose and fulfillment.
We can’t rush our relationship with God like we can’t rush our relationship to anyone. It takes time. It takes trust. It takes sharing and being vulnerable. It takes admitting our faults, failures and sins. It takes giving the time to listen and to hear. There are people I love but when I am talking to them, they will often check their watches or phones. Or if I tell them something they will say very abruptly, “You’ve already told me that.” You could take their abrupt response as , “Shut up idiot. You may have forgotten what you told me but I have not forgotten. Quit wasting my precious time with stuff I already know.” What if God responded the same way with us each time we go back to Him confessing the same sin? Would we really want a God like that? No!
This is why the Apostle John writes this in 1 John 5:14-15, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (15) And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” (NASB). Notice it says anytime we come before God with any request He gives us His undivided and full attention.
Becoming a people of the Lord as Moses said to the Hebrews means we have to listen to God. We all have to live with this tension of hypocrisy – we say one thing and then do another. When it comes to spiritual hypocrisy, it is more than not just doing the right thing. It goes along with what Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (or women) to do nothing.” There are many reasons good people do nothing to stop evil, sin and injustice.
While some of the reasons may seem invalid in our eyes, eventually someone overcomes the challenges and becomes a voice for the victim. I think of Candy Lightner who started MADD after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver in 1980. I think of Robert Anasts who started SADD in 1981 after two high school students were killed by drunk drivers in two different crashes in Massachusetts. Now there is at least one MADD and one SADD office in all 50 states. When it comes to spiritual hypocrisy, we as followers of Christ must be willing to put ourselves out there to stop injustice, to stop evil and to with the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
This means we do not take matters into our own hands; instead, we go to the Lord as Moses did, as Joshua did, as Elijah did, as David did, as Jesus did and listen to Him tell us what we are to do and how we are to do it. A quest without a godly purpose is nothing more than just a quest – it is not a mission from God. Moses was on a mission for God. It was never easy and often the Hebrew rebelled and God had to punish them, but Moses never relented. Why? He was always listening to the Lord.
For Moses to lead the Hebrews, he first had to love the Lord enough to listen to the Lord so that he could love the Hebrews. Yes, I know that Moses had his failures like we all do, but I am not attempting to isolate those. I want to focus more on his overall life after he responded to God’s call. This is why Moses is mentioned in what I call the “Hall of Fame of Faith” in Hebrews 11. Read Hebrews 11:23-29. We have the first five books of the Old Testament because Moses stopped and listened to the Lord. Meaning – we today reap the benefits of his willingness to be still and know God. We learn to obey the Lord one step of listening obedience layered upon another.
Questions To Consider
- When it comes to listening to the Lord, how often do you do that and how do you do it when you do? How do you know it is the Lord speaking to you and not your own ideas or thoughts?
- What are the challenges for you to be still to know and listen to God?
- As you have listened to the Lord in the past, what would you say is the most powerful or influential thing the Lord has ever said to you and why?
- What is it that the Lord wants you to do in the love of Christ? What is holding you back from doing it?
Scripture To Meditate On: John 8:47,”He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God” (NASB).
Prayer To Pray: “Heavenly Father, forgive me for when I have disobeyed You and ignored Your instruction. Grant me the eagerness to grow in knowing who You are by listening and obeying Your Word. I want to love You and Your truth above all else, and increasingly learn to walk in listening obedience to You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I love you Southside!--Pastor Kelly