Are You Listening To God?

“I am like the deaf, who cannot hear, like the mute, who cannot speak,” Psalm 38:13 

My mother lives 300 miles from me. We keep in contact and I love her dearly. Occasionally, my mother has issues either with her computer or her television and calls me with questions. Often, she is so busy asking me questions about the problem that she doesn’t take time to listen to what I’m saying. I will say to her: “Mom, you can’t listen if you are talking.” I sometimes wonder if God would say the same thing to us? 

We can get so busy in our lives that we do not take time to listen to God, to read His word, to speak, and then be silent in prayer before Him. We can get so caught up in our problems and the issues in our lives that we fail to hear that still small voice of God whispering in our ears. We need to talk to God in prayer, but we also need to listen. 

When my thorn in the flesh is hurting me particularly bad, and pain and misery is filling up my life, I can become deaf to anything God might be trying to tell me. I can also blind to anything He might be trying to show me.  

Hearing God in the midst of the storms of our lives can be a challenge. We can get so focused on the wind and the waves of affliction that it absorbs all of our attention. Peeling our eyes and ears off of the storm around us can be difficult, but we must if we are to find our way through the storms of life. 

Forcing ourselves into stillness and silence before God may be the action required to bring about the resolution of our situation. Seeking to look beyond the storm and listening past the noise of our trials and tribulations may be the recipe for the solution to our troubles. 

Maybe you are faced with a particularly challenging time right now. Perhaps certain issues in your life have stolen away your attention so that you are having difficulty focusing upon anything but your problems and challenges. I would encourage you to stop. Take a breath. Silence your thoughts. Then look up and ask God for the answers to your perplexing problems. He may not give you an audible answer, but if you will listen and pay attention, perhaps He will show you a way forward through your problems. 

Prayer: Dear Lord, sometimes the noise of our problems drowns out Your voice of guidance in our storms. Help us to be still, be silent, and listen for Your guiding voice. Amen.