I want to tell you a story: When our oldest daughter was in Junior High School, I took a huge leap of faith and decided to homeschool her. It was a little rocky, a little rough in the beginning, but honestly, it was the best thing I had ever done for our relationship. It bonded us together in a new way. It improved our communication skills. We had a lot of one on one time.
Honestly, my husband was a little jealous of all this one on one time I had with her. He decided that he would take over the tucking in time. He would take over that time of getting her into bed, having those last few words with her – which she would often drag out to thirty plus minutes of chatting. He didn’t mind; he wanted to hear her heart and he wanted to speak into her heart.
A lot of us didn’t grow up with fathers like that. A lot of us grew up with fathers who were too busy, too exhausted, who were that stereotypical strong and silent type, or who were just too caught up in their own thing to hear us well and to listen well.
That gives us a broken lens through which we see God – especially when it comes to hearing Him and Him hearing us.
Whether you’re on the beginning of your journey and just beginning to try to hear from the Lord and you’re struggling with that, or you’re down the road a ways and you’ve hit that place where you’ve lost connection and you can’t seem to tap in and hear the Lord, I want to troubleshoot with you for a couple of minutes what might be going on.
5 Things that Might be Going On When You’re Having Trouble Hearing the Lord (There may be more, but hopefully these are umbrellas that can cover most of the things.):
1. We need FAITH and EXPECTANCY. We need to have faith that God will speak to us! Hebrews 11:6 tells us that “without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” We need to believe that when we draw near to God, He will reward us. What better to reward us with than with His voice, with clear direction from Him? Often those haunting fears from the way our fathers were cloud our hearing and make us feel that God is also too busy or doesn’t care or is too impersonal. It starts to get us into that mode where faith is gone from our prayers.
When that happens to me, this is what I do. I speak out loud prayers of faith. I say, “Heavenly Father, I thank You that You are here with me right now. I thank You that You want to speak to me even more than I want to hear! I thank You that You are a speaking God, that You have never stopped speaking to humankind. I thank You, Holy Spirit, for opening my ears to hear the words of my Heavenly Father.”
It is amazing what that change, that place of faith will do to our ears, opening them up and allowing us to hear from the Lord.
2. WILLINGNESS. We need willingness to hear whatever God is going to tell us. Oftentimes when we approach God, we come with two options. We kind of want one more than the other, so we are trying to sell it to God. That is really a difficult place to hear from. What we need to do is lay down our will before the Lord. It is when we come to that place where we say, “God, I will hear You no matter what You say, even if I don’t like it.” That is the place that brings clarity to our hearing.
3. OBEDIENCE. When we hear, will we actually obey? Matthew 25 tells us the Parable of the Talents and it tells us that when we are faithful with little, we are given more. This applies to our hearing from the Lord. When we are faithful to obey the little instructions that are set before us, we get more instructions. Oftentimes we can look back and say, “I didn’t obey the last thing, but I’m asking for the next instruction.” Go back and do the last thing God told you to do! If we aren’t listening, if we are repeatedly disobeying it will callous our hearts and our ears from hearing the Lord.
4. WORD PROFICIENCY. We need to be hiding the Word of God in our hearts (Psalm 119:11). We need to have enough Word, enough Scripture hidden in our hearts that when a word from the Lord comes to us, we can discern, “Is that the Lord? Or is that my flesh – or something worse?” We need to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word (James 1:22-25). And as we are doers of the written Word, we will be able to handle more and more of the spoken word of God.
5. TIMING. I often wrestle with God over this one! I often think that I need the answer right now. I plead with God, “Please tell me right now! I need to know!” One time the Lord said to me very clearly, not audibly, but very clearly, “You don’t need to know as much as you think you need to know!” I didn’t like that answer, but I knew that He was right. I know that if my heart is right and I’m willing to obey and I’m willing to lay my will down and I’m willing to plug into the Word daily and be filled up with Him, I know that He will be faithful to show me what I need to know when I need to know it.
So as I check my heart for these things – for being full of faith, being willing to hear, being willing to obey, and being proficient in His Word, I know that I can trust His timing – and so can you!
