The Inner Ear

Listening is difficult for most of us.  Even when it is our turn to listen in the flow of a conversation, we often quit listening and start the process of formulating our response when the other person stops talking.  It may appear that we are paying attention to what is being said, but we are paying more attention to something waiting to said.  And, even when we do manage to listen to what is being said, it has to pass through our own set of filters which may allow for distortion, or a wrong interpretation.

 

If listening to what another person is saying to us is hard, think for a moment about how much harder it is to listen for what God might be saying to us.  Of course, the first hurdle in that process is accepting the possibility that God speaks to us.  A second hurdle has to do with understanding that listening for His voice is to listen for a voice that is not spoken.  His voice is not heard with our ears, but with our senses.  It is as if our senses become inner ears tuned to hear what is not spoken and what cannot be heard.

     

And, of course, this takes us to the third hurdle in the discipline of learning to listen for the voice of God.  We do not trust our senses.  We have been taught to trust what we can see and what we can hear with the two ears God has given us.  We have lived a life time practicing the discipline of being logical and trusting only those things which can be objectively proven to be true.  Learning to trust our senses can only happen through a trial and error process which some might speak of as discernment.  But, more than anything else, learning to listen for the voice of God with this inner ear is going to require both faith in God and faith that He really does desire to speak to us through everything which is a part of our life.