Listen and Discern: A biblical understanding

What does the Bible have to say?

If you look through the OT, there are many passages that talk about listening in different ways. And not just in a positive sense, as there are also many passages written about the negative consequences of not listening to God. In the three passages chosen for this article, from Isaiah, Proverbs and James, you can see the importance of listening.

One of the first things that we learn is the importance of giving time to listen to God, as it means that we will gain spiritually, as seen in the verses from Proverbs:

Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favour from the Lord. (Proverbs 8:34–35)

Here we have the picture of a person waiting at God’s doorway. It is not about stopping, listening and hearing straight away, it is about taking time to wait on God, watching and waiting for what God has to say. If we can take time to listen to God, then we receive blessings, as Proverbs tells us twice. Proverbs teaches that the wise person listens to God and follows His instructions. By listening to God, we will find something that gives us life. Too often we want those things that will satisfy us physically, food for hunger, or shelter to keep us warm, etc. We might follow the latest meditations or mindfulness techniques to deal with the stress of our daily lives, but we forget that we also need to feed our soul. Something that the Isaiah passage hints at.

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.’  Isaiah 55.3

This is something for everyone, no matter your status or level of spiritual maturity. We will enrich our lives by waiting for God. There are some other benefits to gain by doing this because the more we listen to God, the more we will develop a hunger for God’s word.

Listen to some words from Psalm 119:

97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. 98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. 99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. 100 I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. 101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. 102 I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. 103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! 104 I gain understanding from your precepts;therefore I hate every wrong path. 105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Ps 119:97–105.)

The more we listen to Him, the more we want to hear what He has to say. It will make us hunger for the word, the Bible, which will take on another dimension in our lives. No longer will it just be readings we do each day or hear read on a Sunday. Instead, they will become words from God that can teach us and guide us, the lamp and light for our path in life. This is one reason we wanted to encourage you to read the Bible in a year, especially if you have not done it before, as it will help us all to hear the whole breadth of what God is saying to us. There will be wonderful passages that can make us rejoice in praise, passages that can make us cry in sadness, and passages that might challenge us to our very core.

There is also a second benefit: Listening to God helps us to focus on His will for our lives. There is a danger that we don’t listen to God enough, because we fear His agenda will not be the same as ours. So instead of listening to him, we avoid it, or we put it off until we get to a point in our lives where we feel we can deal with it. How often have we had the feeling that we know God is trying to speak to us, but we know that if we listen, it will affect us. That means our life, and the lives of others around us would have to change. That is not always easy, so we do the basics and don’t properly set aside time to listen.

Yet if we can set aside time to listen and to hear what God has to say, then, as said above, it will improve our soul, and our life will be fuller and have more meaning. By actively listening to God and allowing Him to take center stage, we can put His call to us into practice. This call can then help us put the priorities of our life into the right order.

The words from John 10:27–28  give us another picture:

27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.

The writer of the commentary on a similar verse in 10.4 says this of the shepherds and the sheep. He comments on his experience.

“…two pictures, one is that of a shepherd leading his sheep through the city of Jerusalem just outside the Jaffa Gate. Cars were whizzing by while the shepherd sang and gently whistled to his sheep, and they dutifully followed him despite all of the bustling traffic nearby. The other picture is that of an early morning with the Bedouins when the shepherds began to lead their sheep out of the sheepfold, which contained the combined flocks of four shepherds. As each shepherd took his turn and began to sing and call his sheep, they dutifully separated from the larger flock and began to follow him to the hills for their daylight feeding.”  Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, vol. 25A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 330.

This comment on a modern day experience aligns with what people would have experienced and seen in the OT or NT scriptures. Those hearing John’s words would understand what he was talking about. In their mind would be the picture of the sheep following the voice of their shepherd. Which then raises a question for us: Who’s voice do we hear and then follow? God’s or the world’s? The more we focus on God’s voice, the more we will hear what He has to say, and we will hear His voice above all others. It means that we can orientate our lives in His direction, avoiding distractions, and competing calls. Because His voice will not lead us astray, it will not lead us on a selfish path. Rather, it will lead us in the way that God has set out. This may be difficult, but following His voice will mean we can go to the pasture where, as above, we can have the food we need to grow. The Good Shepherd, Jesus, will lead us to pastures that will nourish our whole being.

There is a word of warning here also, as pointed out by James 1.22-24

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

As James says, if we do not listen and act upon what we have been told by God, then we will forget. In one sense, the consequence of not listening, as James intimates, is that we will stop being active. A disciple is called to action, to be one who grows individually, and who can help others to come to know salvation through Christ. If we do not act on the word we hear, then we will fail in this mission.

If we don’t act on the word, we won’t produce any fruit. Over time, that can negatively affect us as we live as disciples of Christ. It means that instead of growing we are more likely to stay still in our growth, or stall, which also means that we are more likely to be pulled away by all those things around us that can stop us from growing. There is a reference here to the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:3-9. If we do not root ourselves in Christ, we will ultimately die as we will not be grounded in the word, and other things will kill us off and prevent us from abiding in Christ.

How can we take time our effectively to listen to God? Two things that we can do:

First, be proactive in taking time out of our life to give to the activity of listening and discerning. Do not just see it as a time when you can talk to God, see it as a time when God can talk to you. Remember that Jesus knew the importance of taking time out to be with God.

Mark 1:35 (ESV):

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Luke 5.15-16

15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Jesus knew what the pressures of life were like as the crowds wanted more of Him and would follow him where ever He went. So Jesus knew that He needed to get away from all the distractions and people who wanted things from Him, and took himself away so that He could spend time with God.

How can we do that? How can we use that time effectively? Rowan Williams in his book ‘Being Disciples’ suggests (p.78) that we need to be more Self Aware. We need to stand back and give ourself room to breathe so that we can be more aware of what is going on, so that we can develop a sense of freedom from the life that tries to hem us in with all the demands placed upon us. We need to pray so that we can hear God’s voice. He reminds us of Isaiah 43.1 ‘I have called you by name, you are mine.’ To do this successfully though will take discipline and practice.

A second thing that we can do is to learn to be still. Psalm 46.10 ‘be still and know that I am God’. There is a need to learn to still the body, mind and heart. We also need to learn to not fear silence. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I think this is very true for many of us. We fear silence, sitting alone, being still and not speaking. Without the silence, we will not hear God’s voice. It is important to find a way of being able to be still in silence. Rowan Williams offers these comments:

‘… silence of word, of course, doesn’t just mean not saying anything (although that is always quite a good idea!); it can mean finding ways of saying, ways of speaking, that settle and still you: the small phrase, repeated, that doesn’t break the silence. Like waves on the beach on a calm day; just the beat of a heart; small words, small phrases that keep us steady and hold us when everything else is pushing us around.’ p.80, Being Disciples.

If we can do that, then we can become more aware of God’s voice. Over the years I have put scripture or sentences from theologians framed on my wall. When there is a point where I feel I need to pause, I will use these as a precursor to be still and sit in silence. I may choose to repeat the phrase or sentence for some time, letting God’s voice speak through. But it takes practise for this to be effective.

A final thought I offer is from St Benedict’s ‘rule of living’. The fifth century monk said, ‘Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.’ It is not just about your head, it is about being able to listen with our hearts. Only then will we be able to hear God’s voice clearly.

For some guidance on how to listen to God, then why not use the simple resources from the Church of England’s Contemplative toolkit here:

https://www.oxford.anglican.org/everyday-faith/contemplative-toolkit/practices

Or access it on the ‘Every day Faith’ website here: https://everydayfaith.churchofengland.org

Remember that if you want to talk about this further, then please speak to one of us in church and we would be happy to help in any way we can.

 

Rev. Andrew Walmsley

Curate, St Mary’s Princes Risborough