Wednesday 13th January
Prayer Week
“Stop and listen.
Turn your ear to me and be attentive to my cry. I created you with the ability to hear my voice and I created many ways I can speak to you. Through your conscious and unconscious thought, through someone else, through a song on the radio, an advert at the side of the road, the bible, through nature. You don’t have to worry about being able to hear me. I created in you the ability to hear my voice, even people who don’t know me hear my voice, I have no trouble with talking. I can speak in your dreams, when you’re not even trying to listen to me. But you can choose to tune in, to ask. I love it when you tune in to the finer detail, I love to converse with you and hear what you have to say.”
God created us for relationship with him. He already had a relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit but he wanted to include us in that, we see this in John 17:20-26 where Jesus is desperate to share the Godheads relationship with us.
The bible tells us in Genesis 1 that we are made in Gods image, therefore like he can talk and listen, we can talk and listen. We are all created with the ability to listen to him and to talk to him. When Adam and Eve committed their famous sin, God instantly knew about it, yet he still came looking for them to go for a walk and a talk. They hid from him because they felt ashamed. He still wanted relationship with them and the rest of the bible shows God trying to draw a people back to himself, eventually sending Jesus.
He is still trying to talk to us, still wanting to have a relationship with us, fear and shame doesn’t mean he can’t reach us, Adam and Eve still heard him. Lack of experience doesn’t mean we can’t hear him. Samuel heard God but didn’t recognise it as Gods voice but God kept calling anyway. We don’t need to be good and we don’t need to be good at listening, God talks and we can hear him. Of course we can get better!
We can create space for him where we tune out some of the worlds noise. As with all relationships we can choose how much time we invest and how much we listen, it’s very hard to have a relationship with someone you won’t listen to or won’t speak to. We are in a relationship with a God is 100% committed to us, who absolutely loves us, he has lots of power, lots of creativity and lots of time to sow into talking to you. He created you to need spiritual nourishment as well as physical nourishment, prayer week is a great chance to get ourselves spiritually nourished, to turn to God and hear his voice.
How does God speak to you? Ask him, spend time this week inviting him to speak to you, through dedicated time and when you’re out and about. Ask him questions about things you want to know, things that are troubling you, things you can pray for, things he wants to show you.
Revelation 3:20
“Here I am I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and he with me”
Romans 10:17“Faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ”
Deuteronomy 8:3
“Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the
Lord”
1 Samuel 3:10“And the Lord came and stood calling as at the other times “Samuel, Samuel” And Samuel said speak Lord for your servant hears”
