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Listening. Easier said than done. In fact, saying is usually easier than listening. Interestingly enough, when we listen well, it is amazing what we actually hear. It's no so much that we gain new data or information bits that we did not have, or perhaps have not heard before, but rather something of the person that is communicated in what is being shared that is far more significant than the actual content of the data.
In an "information" age, when all the data we could ever want, and more than we could ever process, is available to us with a few clicks of a mouse, it is sometimes easy to forget the real significance of listening - that is something that happens between people in the context of relationships, not simply the quick and efficient (or not so efficient) exchange of information.
Mike Bennie begins the sermon by considering what it is that is saving our life these days. What he suggests has to do with listening. Perhaps this should not come as too much of a surprise. To help us with that, he invites us to listen to a story we often do not listen to very well, but which is, in fact, all about listening. If you would like to listen to the sermon again, or perhaps for the first time, you can click here to access our sermon library.
Questions to Ponder:
To what extent to you live in the awareness that God really hears you, really gets you, really sees you, and is by your side regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in?
Who are the people in your life that actually listen to you? Ponder that relationship for a moment or two.
To what extent do you really listen? What would you like to do differently? What will you do? When will you start?
What gets in the way most often when it comes to you really listening?
What gets in the way most often when it comes to knowing that you really are heard by a God that loves you?
To what extent to you realize that God hears you even before you speak?
What else to you "hear" in the story of Ishmael?
Genesis 16 (TNIV)
1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my servant; perhaps I can build a family through her."
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian servant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."
6 "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"
"I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered.
9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel added, "I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count."
11 The angel of the LORD also said to her:
"You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the LORD has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers."
13 She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Psalm 139:1-4 (TNIV)
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
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