Joshua, a precocious 2-year-old, watched his mother baking cookies. “Please, may I have one?” he asked hopefully. “Not before supper,” his mother replied. Joshua ran tearfully to his room, then reappeared with this message: “Jesus just told me it’s okay to have a cookie now.” “Jesus didn’t tell me!” his mother retorted, to which Joshua replied, “You must not have been listening!” Joshua’s motivation was wrong, but he was absolutely right about two things:
- God longs to speak to us!
- We need to listen!
In 1 Samuel 3:9, another young boy learned those same ageless principles. When Samuel followed Eli’s counsel and prayed, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears,” he was open to receiving God’s powerful message. Like Samuel, we long to hear God speaking to us but often fail to discern His voice.
God spoke audibly to Samuel. Today He speaks to us by His Spirit through the Scriptures (Romans 16:25-26; 1 Corinthians 15:1-2; Galatians 1:11-12; Ephesians 1:9; Ephesians 3:3; 2 Timothy 3:16-17), other people, and our circumstances. But as a result of neglect and nonstop activity, some of us have become “hard of hearing”. We need a “spiritual hearing aid.” There is one in Samuel’s prayer: “Speak, for your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:10). This humble attitude is a real help for the spiritually hard of hearing.
We need to “adjust” our spiritual hearing aid by:
- Setting a specific time to read God’s Word each day (Psalm 63:1,6; Psalm 119:148).
- Meditating on what we have read (Psalm 1:2).
- Making prayer a priority throughout the day (Psalm 55:17).
God speaks to us through His Word — take time to listen! (Matthew 11:15; Matthew 13:9,43; Matthew 13:10-17; Revelation 2:7) — for we will be judged by His Word (John 12:48).