"A Listening Heart"

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 someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

     Dear Friends in Christ,   

   If you happened to be here 3 weeks ago you may recall that I began my sermon by talking about our hands and what a documentary about our hands might reveal about us.  I then used that as a springboard to lead into a message about how we can become what I called “the hands of heaven.,”  By that I meant individuals who would offer the same kind of compassionate touch and reflect the same kind of compassionate heart to others that Jesus had.

   Well, this morning I want to begin by talking about another part of our anatomy that we’re all familiar with, and that would be our ears.  If you’ve ever studied the human ear as I did in my Anatomy and Physiology class that I took way back in college, then you know that it is one incredibly complex piece of equipment.  For example, the sounds that we hear are initially carried by sound waves through the ear canal to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate.  These vibrations then cause tiny bones in the ear to vibrate until those vibrations finally they reach some fluid in the inner part of the ear known as the cochlea.  When that happens, some hair like projections called hair cells are stimulated.  These then create signals that become nerve impulses which are carried to the brain stem by the acoustic nerve and your brain then processes exactly what the sound is.

   And it all works great – unless you do something really stupid as I once did to damage or disrupt the process.  You see, when I was in high school and college I used to love to listen to loud rock music with my headphones on and the volume on my stereo cranked up all the way.  Little did I know that I was doing permanent, irreversible damage to my ears, resulting in a significant amount of hearing loss which is further complicated by a condition known as tinnitus, something that some of you are familiar with.  Tinnitus is a continual ringing or buzzing in the ear that never, never, never goes away.  Thankfully I’ve been able to compensate for my hearing loss with some very nice and helpful hearing aids.  Were it not for my hearing aids, I would not feel comfortable counseling anyone or just visiting with people because my hearing loss is so great that I would have a very difficult time understanding them.

   So having made that stupid mistake years ago, you’d better believe that I try to take advantage of every opportunity I have to take what has happened to me and use it to warn others, especially teenagers, so that they can avoid making the same mistake.  But do you know what response I usually get?  Not much of one.  I still see them running around with their I-Pods and earphones, bobbing their heads to the music, which is their way of saying, “Well, that may have happened to you, but it won’t happen to me.”  In other words, they hear what I say, but they don’t listen to what I say.  They don’t take it to heart. 

   Not at all unlike what we so often do with God.  How often don’t we come to church or Bible Class or Sunday School or Confirmation and hear the Word of God being proclaimed to us, only to have it fail to make that 18 inch journey from our ears to our heart?  And when it doesn’t reach our heart, when it gets lost or stuck somewhere along the way, then it fails to have the impact upon us that God wanted it to have.  It fails to work its way out in our everyday lives.  Maybe that’s why one of Jesus’ favorite sayings which he used no less than 16 times in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation was, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  “Let him listen and act on what I am saying.”

   And so I ask you, as we consider this important subject this morning, “When’s the last time you had your hearing checked?”  When God tosses the seed of his Word in your direction, what is the result?  What is the outcome?  What fruit does it produce in your life?  To help you ponder those questions this morning, let me ask you a few others, beginning with this one:

   How long has it been since you let God have you?  And I mean really have you?  How long has it been since you gave him an unhurried, uninterrupted portion of your undivided time and attention, just so he could speak to you through his Word?  Now I realize that may not be one of your highest priorities in life right now, what with everything else you have going on.  After all, we’re such busy creatures, aren’t we?  But I want you to know that it was one of the topmost priorities in the life of another one who was far busier than you or I could ever be.  And I think most of you know him pretty well.  His name was Jesus.

   If you spend any time reading about or studying the life of Christ, one thing you can’t help but notice is that he made sure he spent regular time with his Heavenly Father.  For example, Luke tells us in the 5^th chapter of his Gospel: “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”  In Mark 1 we read: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

   Now my friends, let me ask you the obvious question here.  If Jesus, the sinless, spotless Son of God and Savior of mankind, thought it necessary enough, important enough, and worthwhile enough to clear his calendar so that he could spend time praying to his Heavenly Father, communing with his Father, don’t you think we would be wise to do the same?

   But not only did Jesus spend time talking to his Father, he also spent a lot of time listening to him through his study of the God-inspired Holy Scriptures that were available to him.  How do I know that?  Well, just watch him when his archenemy Satan pays him a visit following his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.  For every temptation that Satan brought to him, Jesus countered it with a direct quotation from Scripture.  You know, sometimes the Bible refers to itself as the sword of the Spirit and sure enough, that’s how Jesus used it – like a weapon to slice and dice to pieces every temptation that Satan brought his way. 

   So if we want to be just like Jesus, which is the goal that we’re striving for in the sermon series that I’m currently preaching, and if we want to have ears that truly hear and listen to God’s voice, then we have just in Jesus found 2 disciplines that are definitely worth imitating.  The 1^st one is the discipline of prayer and the 2^nd one is the discipline of Bible reading.  And I really believe that most of you here today would like to make those spiritual disciplines an important part of your everyday lives.  It’s just that you’re so busy or you don’t quite know how to go about it.  So let me get real practical for just a few moments and give you some suggestions to help you get started and headed in the right direction.

   First of all, you need to find a regular time and place.  You need to carve out a slot on your schedule and a small corner of your world and claim it for God.  For some it may be best to do this in the morning.  Others prefer the evening or their lunch hour or right before they go to bed.  No time is better than another and no place is better than another as long as it’s a time and place where distractions and interruptions can be kept to a minimum.

   Then a 2^nd practical suggestion: Speak to the Author before opening and reading his book.  Do you realize that the Bible is the only book we can read whose Author is present every time we read it?  So before opening it, talk to the Author, talk to God, and ask him to help you understand, digest, and take to heart what you are about to read.  Don’t go to Scripture looking for your own ideas; rather, go there searching for God’s ideas for his truths.  Also, don’t get in a hurry when you read the Bible.  Let it soak in.  Let it sink in.  Meditate on a passage when it really grabs your attention.  You might even consider memorizing it.  Reflect on it several times throughout the day until it becomes a part of your very being.  I found myself doing this recently when I was reading a booklet on grief in my morning devotions and I came across a passage that I couldn’t remember reading before even though I’ve read through the Bible numerous times.  It was Deut. 33:25 where Moses is giving his farewell address to the Israelites and he’s speaking specifically to the tribe of Asher and he says to them: “Your strength will equal your days.”  When I read that, it just jumped off the page at me for that’s just another way of saying what I’ve been telling people for years, and that is that God will give you the strength you need when you need it.  But it’s also something I discovered firsthand for myself when my dad died.  Though that was one event that I have dreaded all my life, God orchestrated it in such a way that I was not only able to accept it, but to rejoice when it finally happened because of all that my dad had been through that week.  In other words, his strength was equal to my days.  It was  there when I needed it the most.

   Then one more suggestion:  Don’t be afraid to mark in your Bible.  Underline key passages.  Highlight those verses that speak to what you’re going through at a particular time.  And then put the date in the margin and why you underlined it or highlighted it so that when you come across it at some time in the future, you can recall why that passage meant so much to you at the time and you can see how far God has carried you since then.

   So my friends, if you want to be just like Jesus, you’ve got to let God have you.  You’ve got to spend more time speaking to him through prayer and letting him speak to you through his Word.  But I’ve got another question to help you check your hearing today:  How long has it been since you let God really love you?

   My daughters are too old for this now, but when they were little, maybe about toddler age or a bit older, when I would come home in the late afternoon, I would call out their names, and they would come running to me with outstretched arms and squealing voices.  And for the next several minutes we would speak the language of love.  I might pick them up in my arms and toss them in the air or nibble on their necks, causing them to giggle with delight.  Or we might tumble to the floor where I would tickle their tummies and roll around with them. 

   But suppose when I walked in the door they had approached me as we often approach God.  Suppose they’d run up to me and said, “Hi, Daddy, we’re so glad you’re home because this is what we want:  more toys, more candy, more games, more videos, and more trips to the movies.  And oh yeah, can we go to Disneyworld next summer?”  How do you think that would have made me feel?  A bit used?  A bit taken for granted?  What do you think I might have said in response to such an onslaught and avalanche of requests?  I probably would have said something like this: “Hey, wait a minute, girls!  So I look like a waiter and does this look like a restaurant?  So I look like Santa Claus and is this Christmas?  No, this is our house and I’m your father.  So why don’t you just climb up on Daddy’s lap and let me tell you and show you how much I love you?”

   Have you ever thought that God might want to do that with you, my friends?  Some of you may find that hard to believe.  When you think of the kind of life you’ve lived and how many times you have failed him and disappointed him, you may feel that you’re not worthy of that kind of affection and attention from God?  And you know what?  You’re right.  You’re not worthy of it.  Neither am I.  And yet out of nothing but pure amazing grace, God still offers it to us, just like he did to so many throughout  Jesus’ earthly life and ministry.

  Judas certainly wasn’t worthy, was he?  Yet Jesus washed his feet.  The thief on the cross wasn’t worthy; yet Jesus offered him Paradise right before he died.  Peter wasn’t worthy after his 3 denials; yet a few weeks later the risen Christ met him on the seashore, prepared him breakfast, and reinstated him as a disciple. 

   From those examples and plenty others just like them, we can plainly see that God takes a great deal of delight in offering his love and mercy and grace to those who definitely don’t deserve it.  And that’s exactly what he does for you today, my friends.  He gives you what you may not have gotten a couple weeks ago on Valentine’s Day.  And if you’ll just have the kind of listening heart we’ve been talking about this morning and you open the pages of his Holy Word, you will find God sending you one Valentine after another, like Jer. 31:3 where he says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”  Or Rom. 8 where Paul assures us that “nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Or how about this rarely heard jewel that can be found tucked away in the book of Zephaniah where it says: “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

   So my friends, if you want to have a listening heart, then let God have you.  Let him have all of you.  Give him a regular time and place where you can speak to him through prayer and he can speak to you through his Word.  And then let him love you.  Let him love you as nobody has ever loved you before.  And it won’t take long before his words will become beautiful music to your ears and his love will become something that you just can’t live without. 

 Amen.