I ran into my friend Nick the other day. After asking how I was doing and telling him that I was fine, he paused and asked me again, not believing my first answer. “No Ken, how are you really doing?”
Only good friends can tell when you’re lying to them.
“Things could be better,” I said as I shared a few trials of life that I’ve been going through and telling Nick, a fellow Christian, how frustrated I was because I felt like I wasn’t hearing from God.
Nick’s response and boldness caught me off guard. “Don’t you read the word?” he asked. “Whenever I have time… which is mostly never,” I admitted. “Don’t you pray?” I thought about how to respond and decided to be truthful since Nick’s truth-dar seemed to be working pretty well. “Whenever I need something, I guess.” I realized that I was about to get schooled by my friend.
“Then the problem isn’t that you’re not hearing from God – you’re just not listening for him. There’s a difference between hearing and listening,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re not hearing from God.”
I agreed and changed the subject, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about our conversation.
He was right, after all.
There really is a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive and doesn’t always lead to understanding. But listening is intentional. It takes effort. And often, listening means trying to find the true meaning behind whatever it is that the other person is communicating to us. Maybe that’s why Nick asked me how I was doing twice. He was listening to me, not just hearing from me.
We all have the ability to listen…
When I ask my three-year-old if he’s poopy and he screams no and runs away from me, faster than the Flash racing Superman, I know that the real answer is yes because I’m listening.
And when my wife is cleaning the kitchen and I ask if she needs help and she shakes her head no while simultaneously giving me the stink-eye, I know what her real answer is, too.
So then, why is it so hard for us to hear from God?
I think the real meaning behind the words spoken by my friend is that God does speak to us, not only through His word and prayer, but also through promptings and our conversations with others.
That conversation with my friend ended up being an answered prayer. Now I realize that because I had been so focused on trying hear from God that I wasn’t intentionally trying to listen to Him.
As I said goodbye to my friend, he left me with one more thought which spoke deeply to me.
“Remember that God allows us to go through trials so we can learn a lesson and help others down the road who go through the same thing. Ken, learn the lesson. Then help others.” I hope I have.