As we begin a new year, we wanted to take 3 weeks to challenge one another to get ‘tuned in’ to hearing from God. To encourage one another to live out a proactive pursuit of hearing from God – to learn how to attune our ears and hearts – to Listen Closely, Listen Up and Listen Carefully to the whispers of God for each of us. Here's 2 books that you might find helpful:
Whisper, by Mark Batterson
Hearing God, by Dallas Willard

Remember:
to LISTEN = WE MUST PAY ATTENTION (and anything involving ‘pay’ has a cost to it)

Hearing:
The outer ear functions like a funnel, catching sound. After traveling through the ear canal and hitting the eardrum, the vibrations bump into 3 of the tiniest bones in our body: the hammer, anvil and stirrup. After sound waves travel past the eardrum, the 3 tiny bones to the middle ear, the vibrations spiral through a snail shaped tube called the cochlea, which contains thousands of microscopic hair cells that amplify the sound along the way. From there the eighth cranial nerve transmits the impulses like Morse code to the auditory cortex, where pitch, volume, tone, distance, direction and meaning are all translated into actionable information.
=you experience a miracle every time you hear a bird sing, someone speak to you and music is played.

Position yourself to have ready, available and open ears to hear, like Samuel.
‘speak Lord, your servant is listening’
- make this a prayer of your life as you go through your weeks, as you read the Scripture, as you lean in and attune your ears to God’s whispers.

Quote:
"Nothing can calm our souls more or better prepare us for life's challenges than time spent alone with God." -Billy Graham

bottom line:
Listening doesn’t happen by default, it happens by design.
It takes intentionality.

QUOTE:
“In our attempts to understand how God speaks to us and guides us, we must above all hold on to the fact that this is to be sought only as a part of a certain kind of life, a life of loving fellowship with the King. …We must therefore make it our primary goal not just to hear the voice of God, but to be mature people in a loving relationship with him. Only in this way will we hear him rightly.” -Dallas Willard (Hearing God...developing a conversational relationship with God)

"As the weaned child no longer cries, frets and longs for the breast, but lies still and is content, because it is with its mother, so my soul is weaned from all discontented thoughts, from all fretful desires for earthly good, waiting in stillness upon God, finding its satisfaction in His presence, resting peacefully in His arms.”
=A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Psalms (Bellingham, WA), 626.

Develop Our Spiritual: “Attentive listening skills”
...just like people can develop, improve and get better at their listening skills; we can get better at developing our spiritual attentiveness & listening skills

*** during your reading time in the Scriptures/devotionals – make sure to leave some space to listen; don’t just read to finish & move on – read to reflect pray: "speak Lord, your servant is listening" (memorize 1 Samuel 3:10)

***seek out quiet space/time throughout your rhythms of life/seasons of life
-take some time each week to be quiet, be still, silent
-take one day a month to sneak away to be silent, quiet
-try to get away one extended time a year for the same pursuit

TURN DOWN the world’s noise, in order to TURN UP God’s Voice.
=this takes waiting patiently - INTENTIONALITY

Q) who has the loudest voice in your life?
Are there some voices you need to ‘turn down’, in order to turn up the voice of God in your life? (=turning off the phone/tv occasionally, schedule some listening time, etc)

Remember:
Listening doesn’t happen by default, it happens by design.
It takes intentionality.

Dallas Willard says that practicing solitude & silence are the most important spiritual disciplines for people today. In our busy, noisy world we need to “unhook” / unplug - get still - in order to be ourselves with our Lord.

In solitude and silence we’re learning to: stop doing, stop producing, stop pleasing people, stop entertaining yourself, stop obsessing, stop worrying — stop doing anything except to simply be our bare and real self’s before God, be found by him – TO BE LIKE A WEANED CHILD.

NEED PRAYER? ....we've got some of our prayer team and pastors available following service to pray with you. You can also submit your prayer request via our app. We look forward to partnering with you in prayer.

IF YOU'RE NEW: we throw a 10-minute party immediately following the service in the back corner of the room, if you're new, we'd love to meet you and welcome you!