March 21 - Listening Skills

 Read today’s texts first: Joshua 9-11;1 Corinthians 6

MAXIMize YOUR DAY

God wants us to listen to Him and, shocker,
He actually wants to listen to us. 

I regularly teach pre-marriage couples about interactive and reflective listening gleaned from my 46 years of wedded bliss to Jan. Okay, I pretend to know what I’m talking about but after more than four decades, I admit, it’s still a work in progress. Guys - can you ever understand what your wife is really saying? 

If that’s true of married couples, imagine the communication gap between man and God! And yet, God wants us to listen to Him and, shocker, He actually wants to listen to us. That’s the way it was in the beginning - Adam and Eve walking and talking with God in Eden (Gen. 3:8). That’s the way it can be with us now if Jesus lives in our hearts (Rev. 3:20). But we can even see God pursuing that kind of relationship with man before the finished work of Calvary. He talked with Moses face to face (Ex. 33:11; Deut. 34:10). Now, in our reading today, He is listening to Joshua (10:14).

In earlier blogs we’ve talked about the importance of listening to God, consulting with Him before every major decision. For the most part, Joshua did that, and when he didn’t (eg. Ai, the Gibeonites), the consequences were devastating. But we know that; we see it over and over again in Scripture, and we can get the impression that our relationship with God is one-sided. Just listen to God and do what He says (like marriage, right guys?). But what stood out to me in this passage was this verse: there has never been a day like it before or since, a day when God listened to a human being (10:14).

That was true. God may never again rearrange the solar system because we asked Him to, but He does listen to us. Recently, God encouraged me with a miracle of my own, small to some but huge to me, just to confirm I had made a good decision. It was a special moment between us, too personal for this blog, but life-changing for me. “Lord, thank You that not only do You speak regularly to me, You also listen.”