REVIVALTALK

  Isaiah 36:13-20 – “Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Hebrew, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you; nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make peace with me by a present and come out to me; and every one of you eat from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree, and every one of you drink the waters of his own cistern;    until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” Has any one of the gods of the nations del...

  James 1:9 - “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” The Apostle James, the half-brother of our Lord, instructs us be “quick to listen.” There are many voices that compete for our attention. When I was young, we only had three television channels in our home. We had NBC, CBS, and ABC. I remember when we first signed up for cable, there were just a few channels. Today we have hundreds of channels along with YouTube and other internet streaming services. There are so many voices competing for our attention. Radio, internet radio, podcasts, and even shortwave radio all have voices competing for our attention. When I was a child, we learned a song in Sunday School entitled, “Oh Be Careful Little Eyes What You See.” The second verse reads: Oh, be careful, little ears, what you hear,  Oh, be careful, little ears, what you hear. There’s a Father up above looking down in tender love, Oh, be careful, little ears, what you hear. Who...

The Discipline of Listening James 1:19 – “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”             Paul Tillich writes, “The first duty of love is to listen.” [i]   One of the primary responsibilities of the believer is to learn to listen to the voice of the Lord.  Fifteen times in the New Testament, more than any other command, the believer is commanded, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.” [ii] If we are going to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then we need to learn the joy of hearing His voice.  Listening requires discipline.  We must become good listeners. There are times in our lives that we need to still ourselves, stop talking, stop praying, and learn to wait in His presence and hear what the Spirit is saying to you.  You might ask, “How do I know that God...