LENT: Mar 23 - Ezekiel 3:10

Mortal, all my words

that I shall speak to you

receive in your heart and

hear with your ears.

Ezekiel 3:10

 

Number one, God speaks.

 

Most times, God speak through his Word.

 

But sometimes he speaks personally. I know a few people who (very) occasionally hear words. I know others who – somewhat regularly – sense, instead, a moving of the Spirit. Now … they’re not “special.” Rather, most of them …

 

1)    have read God’s Word for years until they know God’s purposes and patterns by heart (so that they know instinctively whether something could be of God or not of God)

2)    have cultivated a deep prayer life … and one that involves a lot of listening, and

3)    have, from the beginning, tested what they’ve begun to experience against the clear messages of God’s Word and have tested what they’re experiencing with people of deep faith.

 

But here’s the first point: God does speak … and most often through his Word. Indeed, if you want to hear from God, start reading more and more and more of his Word. Learn his “voice” through the pages of scripture.

 

Second, as God told Ezekiel, “receive … all my words … in your heart.”

 

It’s not enough to just read God’s Word. We have to open our hearts to it. We have to accept “ALL” of it as His Word. We can’t pick and choose.

 

Now, as we’re learning to know God’s Word by heart …

 

·         we may not understand it all. (So … get a Study Bible! Or study it with others! Ask lots of questions!)

 

·         and we may not even like it all. (That was my barrier when I started reading the Word seriously. I argued with it. But keep reading. The more I read, the clearer I saw God as a parent – with both patient love, self-sacrificing love, and disciplining love. We can’t understand the Bible without understanding the horror of sin … and how much it hurts God … and how much he loves us anyway … and what he gave – his only begotten Son – because of that love.)

 

But the more and better that we listen, the clearer God’s voice becomes. Indeed, the more he begins to speak.

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who hears God best

through his Word

(which I love)