One of the primary reasons I wanted to go on the World Race is to become intimate with God. To me, intimacy means two people who desire to fully know and love one another. This kind of intimacy requires time, intentionality and communication.
With that said, I decided to make my goal this month to practice listening prayer. Essentially, listening prayer is conversing with God. It’s not a monologue, it’s a dialogue asking God questions and waiting for Him to respond and hear His voice. To help guide me in this practice, I set out to go through Seth Barnes’, the founder of Adventures in Missions, month long daily devotional book, “The Art of Listening Prayer”.
I was excited about creating the time and space to hear from God each morning, but at the same time, I was also nervous and doubtful that I would be able to. Part of me thought that this was going to be easy and a new breakthrough for me in my relationship with Christ and the other part of me thought about the past and the difficulties I’ve had in discerning my voice and thoughts from His.
Morning after morning, I woke up around 5:15am and dedicated my time before breakfast to the Art of Listening Prayer devotional and to be honest I struggled.
- I struggled with silencing my own thoughts.
- I struggled with the awkward silence waiting to hear God’s thoughts and instead journaled my own response to how I would answer the question or rather what I thought God would say.
- I struggled with confining Him to speak to me in a certain way.
- I struggled with feeling God’s presence.
- I struggled with frustration at myself and at God.
Despite these struggles and frustrations, not once did I want to give up or stop. First of all, I knew in the back of my mind that anytime someone is learning something new it takes time and practice. Second of all and most importantly, I know God is a God who speaks and wants intimacy with me, so either it’s my willingness to hear or it would only be a matter of time.
One of my favorite songs right now is Take Courage, and the lyrics could not be more fitting for me right now. The chorus says,
Take courage my heart Stay steadfast my soul He’s in the waiting He’s in the waitingWhen I shared my struggles with my parents and asked them to pray for me, they had the same message and words of encouragement; He’s in the waiting.
The bible has countless stories to back this up and the more I think about the people who waited on God and the seasons where He was silent, the more I believe something big is coming; breakthrough is coming and whatever it is God is preparing me through this time.
In Luke chapter 8, Jesus tells the parable of the sower and the seed. In the story, the sower (Jesus) scatters seeds (God’s word and what He says to us) on four different types of soil.
The first type of ground was hard and the seed could not sprout or grow at all and became snatched up instantly.
The second type of ground was stony. The seed was able to plant and begin to grow, however it could not grow deep roots and withered in the sun.
The third type of ground was thorny and although the seed could plant and grow, it could not compete with the amount of thorns that overtook it.
The fourth ground was good soil that allowed the seed to plant deep, grow strong, and produce fruit.
He used this story to explain to his followers and the disciples how there are different responses to hearing God’s word, which is dependent on the condition of our hearts (the soil). He reveals,
Soil 1: Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved.
Soil 2: Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.
Soil 3: The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.
Soil 4: But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.
I’ve heard this parable many times believing that I was the good soil, but this month God has been teaching me that I still have thorns and weeds in my soil.
FYI a good clue that God is teaching you something is when you continuously hear the same message over and over in a short period of time. And that’s exactly what happened.
On day 19 of the Art of Listening prayer, I quickly read through the devotional, but I wanted to save going through the questions for later that day since it was a day off of ministry and we were going into town early to access Wi-Fi.
After getting what I needed to done with WIFI, I decided to listen to a new sermon uploaded to YouTube by one of my favorite pastors to listen to, Bill Johnson. It was entitled the “Spirit of Food.”
Not too long into the sermon, Bill started talking about hearing the voice of God and how our life depends on it. With my difficulty in hearing God’s voice this month, I started paying close attention. He said the last thing he wanted to say before getting into Luke 8 (the parable mentioned above) is
“we know that faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God. Anyone who doesn’t have devotion to the Word of God will sometimes be misled by what they hear because there are other voices…Our issue in building faith, in being people of faith, is not so much our inability to hear from God, it’s our willingness to hear other voices.”
This immediately struck me and Holy Spirit convicted me of how I have willingly listened to other voices, mainly Satan’s lies and what the world desires and says.
Bill then said he was going to be focusing on one verse from the parable, verse 14 about the soil with the thorns.
Regarding this type of soil, he said this is the soil that receives many seeds. It’s someone who has received what God is saying and plants it into their heart, but they have also received this other idea and this back up idea in case this doesn’t work and this other perspective because they know and have seen others who had that promise and God didn’t fulfill it in their lives.
He then went on to say that the problem is not with us hearing God’s voice; the problem is we give ourselves to other things that are not the result of God’s Word. We end up entertaining ideas and thoughts that have become implanted in us that rob from the soil with what the Word of God needs to draw from. Those bad seeds then grow and compete for sunlight and choke the seed of what God has said.
He illustrated this with the example of Peter walking on water. As soon as Peter started walking towards Jesus, he began to concern himself with the waves and began to consider other issues and problems, rapid growing seeds that create thorns that choke the promise of the Word that God. Jesus said, “come”; that was the Word. Peter saw the waves, that was another word that ended up distracting him and tripping him up.
For the first time, I heard the connection between hearing God’s voice and the different types of soil. I understood what the third soil actually looked like and God opened my eyes to why I wasn’t hearing his voice clearly. While I have been hearing His voice, I also have been listening to and holding onto the lies of the enemy and the world.
When I got back home from town on our day off, I went back to the Art of Listening prayer devotional for that day to finish it and of course that day was entitled “Dealing with Distraction” and focused on Luke 8:14 the same verse from the sermon. Not only that but the next 5 days of the Art of Listening prayer fixated on this verse. Clearly, the Lord was speaking to me and revealing what I needed to hear and work on.
The good news is God reminded me that in this parable and in John 15, He is the farmer and He is willing and wanting to pull these weeds for good out of my soil.
One thing I am working on is sincerely replacing lies with God’s truth and using the Word as an actual weapon. Ephesians 6 talks about putting on the Amor of God and the only offensive weapon is the Sword of the Sprit, which is the Word of God. I realized that I have been using Scripture so lightly trying to “believe” these truths over the loud lies and thoughts Satan puts there, forgetting that the Word of God is truly a weapon, the same weapon Jesus used to rid of Satan in the desert while he was being tempted by the devil for 40 days.
My prayer is to be the good soil. I want to retain the word God gives me so that I can grow and bear fruit in my life.
