Heard

 It’s one thing to speak, another to listen, and another still to be heard. Not all who speak are heard, and not all who listen hear. Sometimes, and this happens more often than we want to acknowledge, you can speak, and the individual listens, but what they hear is what they want to hear. If you have children, you know what I’m talking about. They ask if they can have candy, and you say no, but what they hear is don’t eat the whole bag. Leave a couple on the bottom so that you have something to put back in the cupboard. That way, mom won’t see the empty bag in the trash and start an investigation into the matter.

When you call them on it, they’re so sincere in their obfuscation that you have to take a second and remind yourself what you said. You’d think you were raising politicians and not two little girls.

When we speak to God, He hears, and He doesn’t pretend He heard something other than what we said. That is a comfort and a strength because if He hears, then we know He will act on our behalf in due course.

One of the most challenging things we must contend with as believers is accepting that God does not think as we do. He is not limited to a handful of decades or a handful of centuries. He is from the beginning and will be forevermore, so His perspective will naturally differ from yours or mine.

As an adult pushing fifty, I have a different perspective than my five-year-old about pretty much everything, except for how fun it is to jump up and down on the bed. That we agree on.

We cannot expect the eternal God to see things the way we do. Because He is eternal, we can, however, defer to Him and do as He commands, knowing that by doing so, His name will be glorified through us.

God hears you! What an awe-inspiring reality. If you’ve ever had feelings of unimportance, if ever you thought you didn’t matter, that you were invisible, just going through life on your way to the grave, just remember that the creator of all that is seen and unseen hears you. Not only does He hear, but He also promises to help, to comfort, to strengthen, to restore, and to mend.

A relationship is reciprocal. When we speak, He hears, but when He speaks, we should hear as well. What we should hear is what He said, not what we would like to hear, because He knows what He said, so try as one might, they can’t get one past Him. If our expectations extend only insofar as Him hearing us, then it’s not really a relationship; it’s the Christian version of having a genie we make wishes to.

If someone insists that they love you, but the only time you hear from them and the only time they seek you out is when they have a problem that needs fixing, eventually you will start to wonder if the love is there or it’s just a ruse to get something from you.

You can fake sincerity but only for a time. That’s why so many spiritual mentors nowadays are nothing more than flashes in the pan because if what they are doing doesn’t come from pure intentions and a sincere heart, eventually, that feeling that something’s not quite right begins to make itself known to the point that you can no longer ignore it.

It’s not as though it takes God a long time to figure out if the desire of someone’s heart is Him or something they can get from Him. He knows the end from the beginning, He sees the inner parts of men’s hearts, and the idea that we can deceive or trick Him in any way, shape, or form is ludicrous, but men still try. Perhaps they can pretend to love Him long enough to get a prayer or two answered. Maybe they can pay Him enough lip service to have Him act on their behalf before the illusion crumbles.

That is what God has been reduced to in our modern era, and it’s disheartening and troublesome. If you don’t have time for God on your good days if you don’t spend time with Him when you want nothing from Him, how can you claim there is reciprocity there?

What we have been sold by modern Pharisees is not a reciprocal relationship with God but a situational one. Give me stuff, and I’ll acknowledge you. Straighten my teeth, clear my acne, and let the love of my life knock on my door with a free pineapple pizza. That’s just for starters. The list is long, but I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you, Lord. I’ll revisit the conversation once these things are done and will have another batch of wishes for you. That’s a bit different from though He slay me, yet I will trust Him, but maybe something got lost in translation.

Serving God with an ulterior motive in mind is not serving Him at all. It’s pretending to serve Him until you get what you were after. Then, the pretense can drop, and you can go back to what you truly love, either sin or yourself. That’s not very loving, brother Mike. It’s the truth, though, isn’t it?

We’ve been overly concerned with feelings to the point of sacrificing the truth in this generation, and we see where that’s gotten us. Up is down, black is white, sin is a virtue, and godliness is legalism. All this confusion brought to you by feelings! God hears, but He hears the prayers of the righteous. Don’t believe me? I have proof:

Proverbs 15:29, “The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayers of the righteous.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.