Lord, help us to listen

I remember a man who stopped me once after a church service to tell me some of his troubles. He was not happy with some of the developments in his life and seemed to believe that telling at least one more person how he felt would give him some satisfaction. I listened for some time as he described some decisions he had made that resulted in pain and difficulty.

Eventually I got a word in and asked if he felt anyone had pressured him to make those decisions. "No," he replied. "It was actually the opposite. I was given much advice to do something different." The conversation then went on with him doing most of the talking.

As he spoke, I prayed for wisdom and finally I said to him, "I really have just one word to share with you. That word is, listen."

He seemed to believe that his greatest need was to talk, venting his anger and frustration. Knowing he had often done this, my challenge to him was to somehow change his mind and urge him to make an effort to just listen.

Some of the things that we get most disturbed about happen in our lives because we have not listened.

Firstly, we have not listened to God through prayer and time in the Bible. We come to God and layout our list of things we desire and want Him to deal with. We ignore His Words in Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God" (NKJV). We continue to strive and voice our wants and concerns and miss His guidance, to our peril. We do not rest in His peace.

Secondly, in our world we do not like to sit still and be quiet for more than a few minutes, we have to be up and doing what our heart thinks best. God told the prophet Jeremiah, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; Who can know it" (NKJV Jeremiah 17:9).

We all have the ability to surround ourselves within an impenetrable shell of rationalization, projection and denial, which is nothing short of amazing.

Lastly, we all desire to be wise and God told us how to do so in Proverbs 1:5, which was written by a man named Solomon whom God blessed with wisdom, "A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel" (NKJV).

When we have issues that confound us, we often seek guidance from other people to see what they have to say about the situation. They should be people we respect and trust. The problem is we sometimes do not like what they say so we seek out a multitude of counselors that will say what our itching ears want to hear. When we do this, we are headed for trouble.

Few prayers will make more difference in your life than one that says, "God, help me to just listen and really hear."