The Year of the Listening Heart

     As I think about listening, my mind drifts to my elementary music classroom . . . I know my students hear my voice, but are they really listening to my instruction? It's not difficult to determine who is truly listening.  For instance after a detailed explanation about our days music lesson on our recorders, I'll get the classic questions such as "Mrs. Holmes are we going to be playing recorders today?"  I don't usually have to answer those types of questions (that have just been answered!) because the students who were listening quickly answer for me . . ."Yes! She just told us what we're going to do.  Weren't you listening?!"  Then there's always the times when they clearly hear my directions, they are using their "listening ears" as us teachers like to say, but they simply choose not to follow the directions.  When listening to a musical example, I often remind them to "use their ears, not their mouths" to listen.
     Then my mind drifts back to my own heart . . . how often am I guilty of these "listening flaws" myself?  Many times I find myself using my mouth way too much instead of using my ears to listen to and enjoy what God is saying.  God is speaking, but I may choose to focus on other things and not truly listen to His voice.  The distractions may be too great, my schedule's too busy, or my body's too tired.  I may hear him, but am I listening?  Or maybe I hear him loud and clear, but simply choose not to follow his instruction.  I'm beginning to see that true listening and obedience are closely united.  If we listen to God, we are compelled to respond to what he's saying to us and take action!

     For sometime now, God has been speaking to us about adoption and has burdened our hearts for orphans.  We would always say to each other "someday maybe we'll adopt if God opens those doors for us."   Well, God is clearly speaking and we want to be obedient to his call in our lives.  We don't want to just hear him, we want to listen and respond with obedience.  Of course, we don't know how all of the details of this journey will unfold, but we do know our destination.  Our destination is Jesus.  Through every step of the journey, whether it results in the adoption of one, many, or maybe even no children, we will be coming to Jesus! We pray that one day in the near future we will hear the pitter patter of feet running through our house and that we can be used by God to help those little feet to learn to step towards Jesus too.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

James 1:22