Are You Listening?

Now listen to what the LORD is saying… – Micah 6.1, CSB

This wasn’t a bit of advice that the people of Israel could take or leave. Instead, this was an emphatic call to Israel to listen to what the LORD was saying to them. But there’s something else important for us to know about this call to listen. In Hebrew, the word for “listen” is the word shama. “Listening, in our culture, is a passive mental activity, and hearing just means that our ears registered sound waves. But in Hebrew, the word shama describes hearing and also its outward effects of taking heed, being obedient, and doing what is asked.”* While we in Western culture separate listening and obeying, the Israelites did not. To them, to hear was to do. Obedience was the expected outcome of listening to the Lord.

Listening to God is not a passive experience where we read things from the Bible as simply more information to be learned and stored away. Instead, listening to God means hearing what God says and responding to him in obedience. It means I will respond and act on what the Lord tells me to do. It means I will heed the same words Mary gave the servants in John 2 when she found out there was no more wine for the wedding guests. What were her instructions? 

“Do whatever he tells you” (John 2.5, CSB).

That’s it. It’s that simple. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is that simple. We walk with the Lord daily, listening to what he teaches us and obeying him by faith. To not obey means that we are not listening to the Lord.

Are you listening?

---

* “Shama (שָׁמַע) – Obedience Is Hearing – Path of Obedience.” Path of Obedience, 30 July 2016, www.pathofobedience.com/words/shama/.

---