On busy streets, attentiveness means survival. In spiritual life, learning to stop, look, and listen can help you quiet your soul to hear God.
As I visit my grandchildren this week, I am reminded of how dangerous the world can be for children. Yet, I was pleased with how well my daughter taught her kids when I took my nine-year-old granddaughter for a walk. As we reached intersections, unbidden she stopped, looked, listened, and then declared the crossing safe before proceeding.
My toddler grandson doesn’t know this yet. If a ball went into the street, he would run right after it. Soon, his parents will begin teaching him the same thing my granddaughter knows—that attentiveness can mean survival. For children and adults alike, situational awareness can mean the difference between life and death.
Attending to the Spirit
Attending to the Spirit can be just as important. Like children learning to stop, look, and listen at roadways, we must learn to stop, look, and listen for God. Rather than paying attention to distractions, we need to look with fresh eyes at what Heaven is sending our way.
The reality, however, is that human powers of spiritual observation are often feeble. We see but we don’t look; we hear but we don’t listen. In Mark 4:12, Jesus paraphrases Isaiah 6:9-12 when he talks about people’s tendency to look but not perceive, hear but not understand. When it comes to attending to the Spirit, we can often be like many spouses about whom their partners say, “They don’t have a hearing problem; they have a listening problem.”
A Listening Problem
Seeing goes beyond just getting a look at something. Listening is more than hearing. This week, as I visit my sick father in the hospital, I am aware of how easy it is to become overwhelmed by all the details and distractions. With machines beeping, needles poking, nurses prodding, and all the overstimulation, it’s easy to miss the vital information medical professionals want to give. When the doctor offers an update, it’s essential to tune out the distractions, lean in, and even take notes. Only by really listening can you understand.
Unfortunately, I sometimes have a listening problem. Not a hearing problem—my ears hear 20/20. But I allow the distractions to crowd out my thinking and I can sometimes miss the details. Even though I hear the specifics, they often go in one ear and out the other. For this reason, this week I’ve been glad to have my wife and brother along with me, taking notes and remembering particulars. If it weren’t for them, I’d be lost as we try to take care of our dad. Details are important. Listening (not just hearing) is important.
Satisfied in Your Spirituality
Speaking for God, Isaiah has a lot to say about listening. In chapter fifty-five of his book, the prophet compares hearing without listening to eating food that doesn’t satisfy. Like diners at high-end gourmet restaurants, we often go to church and fill out plates but remain hungry when we leave. You may sing lovely songs and pray beautiful prayers, but when you’re done, you just don’t feel filled.
Do you want to be satisfied with your spirituality? In this passage, Isaiah invites you to “eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance (verse 2). The prophet offers a few hints about how to fill your spirit with divine love. Take a look with me at some of the verbs that we find in this chapter:
Listen Carefully
In verse two, God says, “Listen carefully to me.” In the following verse, God says, “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live.” As previously noted, there’s a significant difference between hearing and listening. The difference is inclining.
It’s easy to be spiritually hard of hearing. Like a patient or visitor in the hospital, it’s easy to get distracted by the world’s overstimulation. You can be so preoccupied with getting your point across and being heard, that you refuse to listen yourself. Yet, to hear from God, you need to lean in, cup your ears, stick that old-fashioned listening trumpet out, and say, “Eh?”
Behold
To understand God, it’s important to actively observe what Heaven is trying to show you. In the NASB, verses four and five both start with the word, “Behold.” Believers need to observe what God is doing in life situations, look for lessons from nature, and watch for signposts along the road that point the way to God’s will.
This is what Isaiah means in verse six: “Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.” God-sightings don’t usually just happen. You have to seek God on purpose. This means seeking the face of God, rather than just God’s blessings. Jesus said, “…Seek first [God’s] kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you.” Seek the Blesser instead of the blessing. Take time to behold God all around you. The rest will take care of itself.
Listening Prayer
So, how do you seek God? You’ve got to clear out all the unhealthy desires from your heart and simply listen to the Holy Spirit. Without asking for anything, complaining about anything, or even telling God anything—just listen. Listen for God’s words, God’s thoughts, God’s ways. Spend more time listening than you spend talking.
For thousands of years, Christians have practiced this kind of listening prayer. Some call it Contemplative Prayer. Others label it Centering Prayer or something else. Simply put, listening prayer is quieting your spirit before God, putting your own ways and your own thoughts aside, and inclining yourself toward the Divine.
In Isaiah 55:7, the prophet says, “Let the wicked abandon his way, and the unrighteous person his thoughts.” The goal of listening prayer is abandoning your way for God’s way. It’s thinking what God thinks, instead of what you think. Listening prayer isn’t about trying to transform God, change God’s mind, or influence God to do what you want. Instead, it’s about conforming your mind to the heart of the Spirit.
Getting Quiet During Your Quiet Time
Listening prayer is foreign to many people who believe prayer to be about telling the heavenly Provider what you want or need. But think of it this way: telling God what you want all the time is unnecessary because divine Omniscience already knows what you want. Also—which is more important? Getting what you desire or having the eternal plan work itself out in your life?
What you need in prayer is less of your thoughts and more of God’s thoughts. In verse eight, God says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.” Listening prayer is forsaking your thoughts and trying to hear God’s thoughts instead. It means actually getting quiet during your quiet time. It means leaving the world and its distractions behind and returning to God.
Breaking Forth with Song
Verses ten to thirteen describe the soul nourished by this kind of prayer. The spiritual person listens to God, beholds the things that Heaven has to show, inclines toward the Divine, forsakes human thoughts and ways, and returns to the Spirit. Isaiah uses words like watering, sprouting, and bearing fruit. He describes all of creation breaking forth with song and celebrating. It is the blessed state of those who truly seek God.
Go Out…Be Led Forth!
In this environment, refreshed by listening prayer, the final instructions in verse twelve are: “For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace.” Contrary to popular opinion, the contemplative person doesn’t walk around with her head in the clouds. He does not sit idly by and meditate while life happens around him. Instead, Isaiah encourages the person who listens to God to “go out…be led forth!” There is a mission for believers who have learned to stop, look at what God is doing, and listen to the divine Voice. Their mission is peace—to seek it, to find it, and to share it with the world.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In