Listening: Spiritual Discipline

My inside job question is, am I listening effectively to God? Since God is a person, who desires intimacy with those who he calls his friends, is it possible God talks to us?

Yes!!!

God wants us to listen to his voice - he created us for that very purpose. God is not human so we would expect that listening to God might be a bit different from listening to another person. Yet we are also spiritual beings, made in the image of God, and created for communion, and therefore communication, with him. God has built numerous ways into the creation by which we hear him speak.
There are a number of effective ways for people to develop their spiritual hearing and discernment. Human imagination is not only intended for us to make things up but a way for God to work within us, creatively. The human memory not only recalls information from our past, but it is crucial to our ability to imagine the future.
As Christians, it pretty much goes without saying that we love God and want to obey Him. The issue for many of us Christians is similar to the issues we all face today. God speaks, but often people do not listen. I know that as a parent, there many times when I am irritated with my son because I have asked him to do something, and then upon finding out that the task didn’t get done, he’d claim, well, “you never told me to do that.” What’s even more frustrating is when I remember, distinctly, telling them, to do that chore. I spoke; he heard me, but he didn’t listen.
God speaks, but that we sometimes do not listen. So let me ask you, when is the last time God spoke to you? Does He speak to you? And if so, do you hear him? Are you listening to Him?
What are the ways we as Christians can learn to listen to, and obey God? God wants us to do more than simply hear Him; He wants us to listen, and in listening, we have God on our side as we resist evil, and, moreover, turn our lives in the direction of God. So listening to God is far more than hearing. But hearing is the starting point of where we receive God’s word. In His love for us, he has given us many ways to hear His message and to listen to it; these ways are gifts from God or spiritual disciplines.
These spiritual disciplines are practices—they are putting into practice what we have learned. The Bible itself lists many of the spiritual disciplines that God has given us, as tools in growing closer to Him. One of the most important spiritual disciplines is God’s Holy Word. The Bible unfolds the Law of God to us and shows us how we have all broken it.
When we hear and listen to the written Word of God, we are literally hearing and listening to our own salvation.
Romans 10:17,
“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.”
We learn the ways and will of the Lord; we find how to live in a way that is pleasing to God in hearing God’s Word.
Luke 11:28,
“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
So the Bible is our first line of communication with God. We can study it, we can memorize it, we can read it as part of our daily devotion. These are all spiritual disciplines related to God’s Word.
“The largest radio receive on earth is in New Mexico. Its name is the Very Large Array, also know as the VLA. It is a series of huge satellite disks on thirty-eight miles of railways. Why is such a giant satellite needed? Because the radio waves, often emitted from sources millions of light years away, are very faint. The total energy of all radio waves ever recorded barely equals the force of a single snowflake hitting the ground. What great lengths people will go to searching for a faint message from space when God has already spoken so clearly through His Son and through His Word.
2 Peter 1:19
“We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
God not only has spoken clearly and powerfully to us through Christ and through the Scripture, the Lord also has a V. L. E…
Very Large Ear continuously open to hearing us. God hears every prayer of His children, even when our prayers are weaker than a snowflake. Communication by prayer is second only to the God’s Holy Word in importance. Not only does God want to hear our prayer, but He expects us to pray to Him.
God commands us to pray.
Colossians 4:2 the
“devote yourselves to prayer.”
1 Thessalonians 5:16-17,
“be joyful always; pray continuously; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Martin Luther said, “As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.”

Matthew 4:10
“As it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
Psalm 95:6
“let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”
Worshiping, together with the first two spiritual disciplines, works together in our spiritual life. In worship, we focus our attention on God. True worship of God is more than going to Church on Sunday though.
Matthew 15:8,
“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
True worship of God happens when we put God first in our lives; matters more than what others say; and when loving God, matters more than being loved. The heart of worship is to seek to know and love God in our own unique way.
There are many Spiritual Disciplines and we need to focus our lives on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Spiritual Disciplines that God has given us open us up to Him.
Here’s how I remember it:
W = worshiping God
O = opening myself to God
R = relinquishing the false self and idols of my heart
S = sharing my life with others
H = hearing the Word of God
I = incarnate Christ’s love for the world
P = pray to God.
This helps me to hear God.
God Bless!!!