Learning to Listen

This is a Pastor’s Pondering that will be remembered for some time; well at least it will be remembered by me. You see for the first time I’m not typing I’m talking! That’s right I’m talking to my computer and it’s listening to me, and it’s typing out what I say for me. This could revolutionize the way I do my work. And I thought spell check was great. Now I don’t even have to guess at how to spell a word, the computer just does it for me!

Now of course there are some glitches. The computer has to be trained to listen to my voice. But as I speak the computer listens and it learns to recognize my voice as I speak. What will Bill Gates and those people at Microsoft think of next?

So what’s the point of putting this into a Pastor’s Pondering, and why should you take the time to read this? I find it interesting that if we can train a machine to listen to our voice then shouldn’t we be able to train ourselves to listen to the voice of the Lord?

Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice” (John 10:27). Yet some of us are pretty stubborn as sheep. We have a hard time listening to the voice of our Master. What can we do to improve our listening skills?

Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway.
Proverbs 8:34 (NIV)

I think Solomon makes it pretty simple. If we are to improve our skill at listening then we need to listen daily. It’s not good enough to think that we can just come to church on Sunday and then be able to hear God’s voice throughout the week. We improve our listening by listening daily.

Listening daily means we need to slow down and wait on God to speak. The Lord will speak to us, but how can we listen if we’re too busy lto listen because we are doing all the talking, or we are listening to our radios, tuning into the TV, or just a day dreaming? We need to stop what we’re doing and say, “Lord, I’m here to just listen to you.”

When we stop and listen we might just be surprised by what we hear. Lord I’m listening.

(By the way for those who are wondering computer got about 90% of this right. Not bad for the first time. )