Heart of Hearing

Well, this has been the busiest summer of my life, bar none. Life just seems to get crazier and crazier, and time just seems to fly by. Now, I am not complaining, because I see all this as being in God’s hands, and since I truly believe that the finish line is in sight, I can at least try to accomplish all I can for the Lord and for people and trust Him to use the good and pitch the useless.

Perhaps many of you feel overwhelmed too. Time pressure, people pressure, physical limitations, financial struggles, or just sensing the spirit of the age and feeling oppressed spiritually by how weird things are getting – all of these things and more buffet us every day, and we are bound to sense it and have it affect our strength and courage.

But – I would exhort and encourage everyone to take the yoke of Jesus in all things. His yoke is easy, His burden is light – and we can do NOTHING without Him. Yes, you are in a war. Yes, we all hate war. But as a Christian if you are not in a battle everyday, you have to ask yourself if you are on the front lines of faith. A good friend and someone I really respect said recently that believing God for salvation, and having faith to live the life of the Christian are two different things. AMEN! It’s one thing – a glorious thing – to get saved and give one’s life to Christ. But that is just the beginning. If we stop there, we will not live the life of faith, not live for heaven, not grow in grace. The Lord spoke to me strongly this Sunday AM during Pastor’s message. He ministered to me about how we take our first step by believing in Him for eternity. Then, He leads us to trust Him for our months and weeks. More growth in Christ. But then as time goes on, He leads us and tries us to trust Him for our days, then our hours, then our minutes; until finally He is our Lord, our precious counselor, our all in all. And this He must be, or our faith will not be that precious imperishable thing that He values above all else. If you give him 10%, you will have a 10% Christianity. If you give him 90%, which sounds good on the surface, sorry, you will only have a 90% walk. Give Him your all, and you will have all.

So, in these ultra busy seasons, the best thing you can do is keep a tender heart open to Christ in all things. Be correctable, be kind, be tenderhearted. The world is full of rough edges that we need not contribute to. Be different. Go out of your way to be kind and generous. Bless people, spoil your mate, and above all, listen for the voice of Jesus every moment. The book of Revelation has special instructions for those who would have ‘ears to hear’. If we lose our ability to hear Him, and just hear the world, or worse yet, just ourselves, we will miss out on needed direction for our lives and we will miss out on seasons of growth and change. He is preparing us for heaven, and we must be slow to speak and quick to hear. Pray for a ‘heart of hearing’, not to be ‘hard of hearing’. Heaven is on it’s way, folks. It’s a glorious future, now go forth and live like you believe that.

mary d