October 29

An Instructive Moment about Hearing

Friday is accountability day. Would you send me an email giving me a reading of your spiritual temperature this week? You have four choices.....
Hot ... your walk with the Lord is strong and vibrant. You are connecting with him, your faith is growing.
Warm ... the cares of the world are pressing in on you and you are struggling to stay afloat.
Cool ... it is hard to connect with God. There just isn’t enough time for God. It has been a long time since you heard his voice.
Cold... you are seriously disconnected from God. Your heart can best be described as hard and wintry. It has been weeks since you have opened your Bible.

Ears are funny and amazing. The amazing part of the ear is the part you can’t see. Ear collects sound waves and funnels them into your ear canal. The important parts are buried an inch and a half inside the head, just behind and below the eye. Amazingly the inner ear is no bigger than a hazelnut, yet it contains millions of circuits. The most complicated part is the large snail-shaped tube called the cochlea. Tiny little nerve hair cells stick into a fluid which are moved by the sound waves; every time they move we perceive a sound, There are over 20,000 nerve cells in each ear, and up to 100 hairs on each cell. There are different cells for different high or low sounds. Hearing is an amazing sense.

With our ears we heard the alarm clock ring, the crunch of cereal, the horns honking on 95, the barking of dogs and bosses, the wind, and children asking for more Halloween candy. What is the most important part of hearing? Jesus tells us that it is hearing with our hearts. Jesus repeatedly said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear." It is imperative we understand what he meant. What do we need to hear? It is his message about the kingdom of God. Jesus did not simply bring forgiveness of sins and a Get Out of Jail Ticket. He came to bring the kingdom of God to our dark world here in Stamford. The power of God in heaven entered our world to bring healing to all areas of brokenness in our lives. This includes physical, spiritual, psychological, sociological and relational healing. The kingdom of God is a comprehensive theme; it affects every area of life. And our greatest need is to enter into this kingdom and tap into God’s divine power.

How would you guess we do this? It comes by hearing!!! So we need to be very careful how we hear. To live a victorious and abundant life here on earth we need to hear with our hearts the truth of God’s kingdom. This is a crazy message to hear. It is about a king named Jesus who came from heaven to this earth to be born as a helpless, vulnerable child. God moved to the hood. He lived here for 30 years, had a three year ministry and then was falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. He was tortured, killed and buried but on the third day he rose from the dead. Because he is alive he can come and live in our hearts and now. as his followers, we know the kingdom secrets.

The way up is the way down.
The way to be rich is to give away your money.
The way to become powerful is to give up your rights and become a servant.
The way to find life is to lose your life.
Growth only occurs through pain and suffering

This is a crazy message, but it is the only message that can our hearts and the world.

So how is your hearing today? If our hearing is deficient, if we are only hearing with our ears we won’t understand the kingdom, but if we can hear with our ears AND our hearts the result will be a HOT heart.