He Opens My Ear

God is not quiet.  He wants to speak to you and direct your steps today.  "He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to hear as the learned, the Lord has opened my ear..." according to Isaiah 50:4.   While this is obviously describing the Father speaking to Jesus and giving Him the fortitude to go through the torture of paying for sin, it is also very directly addressed to you and me.  God hasn't changed and is no respecter of persons.  

Jesus, in His overcoming temptation in the wilderness, also spoke this truth in a different way.  Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word (rhema - the spoken word for the exact situation and time) that proceeds (verb tense - constantly proceeding) from the mouth of God.  Just as bread sustains the physical man, the spoken word from the Father gives life to the spiritual man.  This ever-flowing voice is what makes us live, or if you will, enables us to overcome with the abundant life.  

Often when we wake up, our thinking and feelings are very fleshy, so taking time to read the Word and letting the giving-life rhema transform our thoughts and feelings to His thoughts and ways is essential.  Psalm 23 would confirm this: He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul (my thoughts, emotions, and will).  We let the Spirit renew our mind and re-fill our faith as faith comes by hearing, and hearing, the Word of God. We live by faith, which is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Many Christians deny or confuse whether they hear God.  Hebrews 5:14 would suggest that we grow or become mature by practice, having our faculties trained to discern good and evil.   Therefore, the more we consistently take time to wait on God and receive a word from Him, the more our ability to hear grows and the clearer His voice becomes.  It is good to force ourselves to decide what God is saying by writing it down in a journal.  God is the One who "opens our ear to hear" so He is also the One who will confirm His word to help us know His voice.  

We grow from being children born of the Spirit (John 1:12) to becoming mature sons of God (Romans 8:14) when we are led by the Spirit.  Therefore, take time today to read and hear the Word, waiting upon Him to discern His spoken word to you, and write down what, to the best of your knowledge, is from Him.  Review it later and begin the simple practice of hearing His voice each morning to let Him give you His life.  God is faithful and He who opens your ear will help you learn to hear. 

Don't Drink Dirty Milk

God promises His mercy is new this morning, and that surely His goodness and mercy shall follow each of us today!  How do we receive this great love and walk in what we have been given?

Every year, for the past 30 years, we do a school chapel toward the end of October entitled, "Don't drink dirty milk."  The whole point is to help the students discern the difference between the things of God and the things of the devil.  Clearly the spiritual battle intensifies during this season when death, fear, skeletons, witches, creepy and scary things are on display in many places.  The world acts like it is nothing to glorify the powers and traits of darkness.  

There was a father who was asked by his children if they could go to a popular R rated movie because many of the other kids at school had gone and "everybody" was talking about how good the story was.  The children claimed it only had a couple of "bad" parts in it.  So the father answered by making some of their favorite brownies.  He then added an unusual ingredient, a little dog poop.  When the brownies were ready, he invited the children to enjoy one.  "It only has a little dog poop in it."  As you can imagine, the point was well made and they declined the treat.  

In Hebrews 1 it states that because Jesus loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, God anointed Him with the oil of gladness more than any of His companions.  Many places in Scripture we are instructed to love good and hate evil.  Jesus says if you love Me, you will obey My Word.  Then, in 2 Corinthians 6:14 and following, the Word points out the total disparity between light and darkness, good and evil, Christ and Belial, the temple of God (which we are) and idols.  He declares that if we separate ourselves from evil, and touch nothing unclean, He will be a Father to us and treat us as His sons and daughters.  In short, He is so pleased that we choose Him over the temptations of the world, that He will allow us to experience His fatherly love.

God gives His mercy to start new each day and His goodness to keep us filled with His presence.  Don't let the spirit of Esau, who compromised His godly position and inheritance just to satisfy his appetites, cause you to settle for less than the abundant life you enjoy in the Lord.  Don't drink dirty milk.  

Do you Write?

 Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk and live in Your truth; unite my heart to fear Your name. Psalm 86:11   Added to this request is the result that flows from God doing this good work in us.  "I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify Your name forevermore. For great is Your mercy toward me."

When we let God teach us and we choose to receive His Word with meekness, our hearts are transformed or "healed" to realize He is worthy of all our affection.  Sometimes we let other things in our minds and hearts and simply forget what we read and how good He is. Therefore, it is necessary for God to unite the various desires of our heart, or at least refocus on what really matters, so we can praise Him with all our heart. 

Which brings me to my question for the day: Do you write?  God told Moses to write a book of remembrance.   In Habakkuk 2:2 God instructs the prophet to "Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it."  Likewise, Psalm 103 reminds us to "forget not His benefits."  I suggest the reason God's Word tells us to "write" and "forget not" is because in the fallen human condition we do forget.  We can look in the mirror of God's perfect law of liberty and forget what we look like, according to James.

Here are two suggestions and my reasons for establishing this practice.  First, whenever I sit down to write this blog, it forces me to seek God and decide in my heart what I believe He is saying.  Writing it down and sharing with you actually settles the truth for me!  Secondly, as a high school teacher, I require my students to take notes rather than just think they are going to remember what is said.  Therefore, I suggest that having a notebook and jotting down the key points that the Holy Spirit is giving you is a powerful way to not only hear God, but then to "walk and live in Your truth."   This is also a helpful way to "let the Word dwell in you richly," as instructed in Colossians 3:16.

God's voice is so much closer than we think.  He lives in us and prompts our every thought and desire.  "In Him we live and move and have our being," according to Acts.  However, we are required to take every thought captive to obey Christ, because Jesus stated that we know the Shepherd's voice but do not know the voice of strangers.  This suggests discernment or choosing the right one and rejecting the wrong one.  Rather than just having a myriad of different thoughts or voices, writing, to the best of our discernment what we believe or determine is God's voice, helps us focus on the truth.  Writing this message down also reinforces our thought process to remember and think about what He is saying to us. 

 

Humble man asks and depends upon God to teach us.  However, we also want to be faithful like Mary "treasuring the word" and like Samuel who "didn't let a word from God drop to the ground."  Receive the Word, write it down, and let the Word dwell in you richly.  These simple steps will cause you to grow in wisdom, understanding, and especially in bearing fruit.