Learning to Listen...

I chose the title "Learning to Listen" for this post because it is the process of learning how to listen to and meditate on God's Word that has helped me to gain the insights I want to share with you.

I am familiar with the Bible - having grown up in a pastor's home with parents who not only read the Bible to us, but taught us how to study it, how to memorize it and how to apply it to our lives, has given me a great appreciation for the value of God's Word.

But sometimes familiarity can be a less-than-positive thing. For example, I can read a passage of Scripture that I know well and not take the time to hear what God wants to say to me through it because I may think I already know what it's about.

I've been working on a read-through-the-Bible project, but completely unlike any other. I've done the "Bible In A Year" a couple of times in my life, and this time I wanted to read the whole Bible not for the accomplishment of reading through it, but for what I could learn and glean from it. So I set out to thoughtfully read and study God's Word, recording in a journal what God is saying to me and what I'm learning. And in the process so far (I'm FAR from being done), I'm learning so much more than what I anticipated!

Right now, I'm in Ecclesiastes - which is a difficult book for me, because I'm a very joyful, optimistic person and the author of this book seems to be constantly expressing negative views on life. I don't like being around negative people or hearing negative thoughts, so it's been challenging for me, but I KNOW that God has included truth in this particular book that I need to discover and apply to my life, so I'm disciplining myself to stick with it.

At our recent Ukraine missionary conference, Daryl Porter talked about meditating on God's Word - this is something that I haven't had a lot of teaching on, but I know is important. I've been doing quite a bit of it myself, too, on this journey through the Bible.

I just finished journalling through Ecclesiastes 8 & 9, but the very interesting thing to me was that I had to read and re-read these chapters at least 3 times in order to let the words sink in and to allow God's Holy Spirit to show me the truth He wanted me to discover through it.

Meditating on who God is as I read through these verses again helped me to look at them in a different light, and what I saw was the sovereignty of God. I was able to read the author's thoughts and see how God was revealing Himself even through the parts of life that we are unable to understand.

I heard in a new way an affirmation of God's sovereignty over life and death, and I was reminded again that my responsibility is to seek and follow God, not strive to understand the "why" and "how" of His ways.

To my results-oriented mind, it seems less productive to take a week to study 2 chapters of the Bible - but the words of this book have become even more precious to me as I have taken the time to listen for God's voice instead of my own thoughts, and it no longer matters to me how much time it takes for me to finish. My desire to just sit and meditate on God's Word is growing and I know my life is richer for it.