Do you need your hearing tested?

 

I really have no excuse for not going to get my hearing checked. As I get older, I recognize my hearing is declining. I ride motorcycle and while I do where a helmet, I usually do not wear ear protection to keep my ears from being damaged. 65 mph on a motorcycle produces wind noise up to and exceeding 100dB. I read that in as little time as 15 minutes that level of noise can cause ear damage. It is safe to say my ears have been damaged by not wearing ear protection while riding. 

Depending on your translation, the word "listen" or "listening" is found in over 500 verses in the Bible. It just stands to reason if we are not listening to God, how can we obey him? And, just like riding a motorcycle, the longer I go without listening to the Lord, the more difficult it becomes. Zechariah 7 is focused on listening:

"Then this message came to Zechariah from the Lord: 'This is what the Lord of Heaven's Armies says: Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each other.'

Your ancestors refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing. They made their hearts as hard as stone, so they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the Lord of Heaven's Armies had sent them by his SPirit through the earlier prophets. That is why the Lord of Heaven's Armies was so angry with them." (Zechariah 7:8-12)

The longer we refuse to listen to the Lord, the harder it is to recognize his voice and there are so many things that distract us and keep us from listening to the Spirit of the Lord. Our "spiritual ears" get damaged just like our physical ears. 

I am sure I will eventually need some type of aid to help me hear. God provides us all sorts of "hearing aids" to more clearly hear his voice. Certainly the word of the Lord through scriptures speak to us, but we can also hear God's voice through nature, Christian friends and family, through prayer, and through intentional times of quiet and listening. In Job it says this:

"For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears and terrifies them with warnings. He makes them turn from doing wrong; he keeps them from pride. He protects them from the grave, from crossing over the river of death." (Job 33:14-18)

Listening to the voice of God is so important and it may affect your life in serious ways, even up to death. The verse below is the sad reality of how God dealt with Israel when it refused to listen:

"Since they refused to listen when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says the Lord of Heaven's Armies." (Zechariah 7:13)

Are you listening for the voice of the Lord of Heaven? What needs to change to fix your hearing problem?