worldview and perspective on Hearing What We Want to Hear

Jesus: You gave us Your love at a high price – Your own death on the cross in our place! By Your grace you give us eternal life and entrust to us Your creation. Thank You, Lord! We come today as Y...

Sometime in the last decade or so I started hearing the phrase “all that good stuff.” I think it happened first when I was ordering dinner at a restaurant. The waitress summarized the menu briefly, en...

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Being heard is so close to being loved, that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.

Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. Grant us ears to hear, Eyes to see, Wills to obey, Hearts to love; Then declare what You will, Reveal what You will, Command what You will, Demand what You will.

Leader: The word of the Lord to the prophet Isaiah says: You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with the...

Dana Visneskie tells the story of a Native American and his friend who were in downtown New York City, walking near Times Square in Manhattan. It was during the noon lunch hour and the streets were fi...

Be not only attentive in hearing, but retentive after hearing.

Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...

Don't believe everything you hear - even in your own mind.

There’s a funny story about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which is probably apocryphal, but is nonetheless a good illustration of the importance of listening. The story goes that Roosevelt was...

Loving God, you spoke the earth into motion. Your words have that much power. So instead of continuing to speak to you, we silence ourselves. Please show us our sins and forgive us for them as we list...

Listen for God, stop and watch and wait for him. To love God means to pay attention, be mindful, be open to the possibility that God is with you in ways that, unless you have your eyes open, you may n...

G. Campbell Morgan offers some sharp insight on the topic of hearing God’s voice. He observes that when God speaks to us, His word often arrives as a disruptive force in our lives. He elaborates furth...

God who hears our cries and is moved by our suffering, Speak to us a word of comfort, challenge, co-mission. Capture our attention and call us out of our routines, That we might catch a vision of your...

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. . . . The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.

Holy and merciful God, we need Your grace and love today. We deliberately lie and speak falsehoods. We mislead and deceive with half-truths. We omit facts that make us look bad. We take pleasure in go...

We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

We can “know” something to be true, and then find it is not true after all. I recall confidently assertive to a student that, of course, the name of the region Perea (to the east of the Dead Sea) appe...

Jesus is clear that it is dangerous to close one’s ears, eyes, and heart to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. In The Magician’s Nephew , a novel from C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, Narnia i...

Language is not speech, it is a full circle from word to sound to perception to understanding to feeling, to memorizing, to acting and back to the word about the act thus achieved. And before the list...

Teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: “Is there anything you needed most and couldn’t get?” Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimou...

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

We all have blind spots. We all have flaws in our personalities, behavior, or work habits that we can’t see, and they block our performance and growth. But others can see them. If we permit them to gi...

In the silence, we raise our voice before you. We wonder aloud why you are so far from us when we call. In the agony of our cry, we are reminded that it is we who have wandered from your fold, from th...

The thing to do with nature ... is to listen to it, and watch it, and look deep into its eyes in a sense, as though you were listening to and watching a friend, not just hearing the words or even just...

Kate's Crisis: Values vs. Church One damp afternoon during the fall of 2016 I was sharing a pastoral conversation with Kate, a professional artist in her late 20s. Over years of meals and convers...

At times God cannot hear the prayer of your lips because the desires of your heart after the world cry out to Him much more strongly and loudly.

The Word of the LORD is true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. As we turn to your Scripture, s...