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“The Lord came and stood there calling as at the other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak for your servant is listening.” I Samuel 3:10 (NIV)

Grocery shopping used to be uneventful, but now I know all the drama consuming the girl standing in line behind me. Too much information, but she is oblivious to the fact that everyone is hearing her conversation, including several giggling toddlers. Me, I just want to checkout and go home.

Tuning out all the excess chatter takes practice, but if we’re not careful we may tune out the wrong things. Listening is a dying art – one that we proclaim we do – but our actions reveal we don’t. Multi-tasking works great in juggling schedules, managing our homes and being productive on the job. But buried beneath tasks, lists and noise we often find ourselves missing the real silent message given by our children, our spouse, friends or co-workers.

Wonder how many times we’ve sat at the feet of Jesus and then walked away with no information? Oh, yes we came with questions. We even poured our hearts out – our live drama was for His ears alone. But when we finished, we were all done – we got up and walked away. Feeling better for our unloading of emotions, yet lacking His words because we failed to listen.

Maybe we’d already decided what direction to take. Maybe we were too distracted to give Him our full attention. You know that’s what real listening is all about – giving someone else our attention. Slowing down and being intentionally focused so we don’t miss what they are saying. Wonder what opportunities we may have missed because He called our name, but we weren’t listening?

Sweet friends it takes great intentionality in our world to slow the pace, silence the constant chatter and zero in on the voice of God. His wisdom, guidance and encouragement are ours for the taking; we just simply need to pursue an intimate conversation with the One who longs to capture our attention. He welcomes our words and desires to engage with us if we are willing to listen.  So the next time we are tempted to dominate the conversation and walk away let’s choose to sit longer, silence our voice and wait to hear what our God has to say – it will be totally worth every minute.

“Father, it is so easy to glide through my day tuning in and out to the noise – listening to bite size conversations. Help me to know, linger and hear Your voice.”

For His Glory

Janet Martin
TRBC Women’s Life