Obedient Listening

 


Have you ever had a crisis in your life?  Unless you live in a bubble, I’m sure that you have experienced at least one of those moments.  Maybe it was the serious illness of a beloved family member, or maybe it was a loss of your job, or maybe you were dealing with a difficult relationship. The situations may be different, but we’ve all faced those times when it seems like there is no hope, no solution, and no way out.

If you are a believer, those are the times when you fall on your knees and cry out to the Lord.  As a believer, I am confident that He hears me, that He listens, and that He responds.  I've been in those situations several times and I felt His presence in the storm.  I knew at those times that there was no place else to turn but I found peace because He was there.  Those are the moments when we ask: “how can someone get through this without God?”

Did you ever stop to think what it would be like if you were faced with one of those crises and you cried out to Him and He had turned his back on you, stopped up His ears, and refused to listen? I can't imagine enduring the pain and turmoil if I thought my Father was not paying attention to my trouble and was not listening to my cry!  If I couldn't cry out ABBA Father, I think it would be more than I could bear.

In Zechariah 7 that's exactly what the Lord said to the Israelites.  They refused to pay attention to Him, they turned their backs on Him, and they stopped up their ears in disobedience.  So, in verse 13 He said to them “when I called, they did not listen so when they called, I would not listen says the Lord Almighty”.

How many times has God called on us for something hard or something out of our comfort zone or something that interferes with what we want, and we refuse to listen?  We stop up our ears because we don't want to hear, and we turn our backs because we think He's asking something too difficult or too unreasonable. 

I don't want to ever find myself in a situation where God has said “she wouldn't listen to me, so I'm not going to listen to her.” I want to be open to His leading. I want to hear His voice, and I want to be obedient.  Earlier in Zechariah, God commanded the Israelites to administer true justice and show mercy and compassion to one another.  That's the person I want to be, being obedient to His leading and His voice.  If we don't listen to Him, He may decide not to listen to us.  May it never be so!

            Listening from my porch!

Zechariah 7: 8 - 13

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