Are You Listening?

Are You Listening?

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, 17  so that the servant of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Do you have a teachable heart? Are you seeking, yes, actually seeking to be corrected and to be trained in righteousness? Do you have a heart open to being rebuked? And, why would you? Why would anyone?

Because you know there is more, and you want that “more” that Jesus wants for you. Therefore, when you are reading the Scriptures, you are reading with a mirror, not a window. In other words, you are asking, “Jesus, are you trying to show me something here?” Not, “Jesus, she/him/they need to hear this!”

Jesus addresses the teachable and non-teachable heart, the reading and hearing, but not listening heart, in the Parable of the Four Soils, in Matthew 13. He first gives the parable, then the befuddled disciples ask him why he speaks in parables. He replies,

11 “Whenever someone has a ready heart – i.e. a teachable heart – for this, the
insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of
receptivity soon disappears. “

When you are reading Scripture, are the “insights and understanding flowing freely?” If not, you may be reading too fast. Or with a distracted mind. Or just to satisfy your checklist of religious duties. Or … you may not be engaging Jesus before, during and even after you are reading.

Jesus continues,

“Those who don’t listen with an open, teachable heart, even the understanding
that they think they have will be taken away from them. 13  This is why I speak to
them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14  In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15  For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,  understand with their
heart and turn, and I would heal them.’

16  “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”

(Matthew 13:11-15 Sam, the NIV and The Message and The Passion Translation)

Open your heart and your mind as you read and contemplate the Scriptures. Slow down as you read. Slow … down. Engage with Jesus as you read. Yes, talk with him, and listen for him. He is listening to you and he will respond. If the insights and understanding are not flowing freely, stop, take a deep breath and ask Jesus to meet you right where you are.

And why? Because you know there is more. Listen with a teachable heart, and find it!