Listening Well

 Have you noticed that it is easy for us to hear what another person is saying, but we may not be listening to what they are saying? The same is true when we are reading. We can read each word, but we are not listening to hear what we need to do about what it is saying to us. This happens to a lot of us when God is speaking to us, or when we are reading His Word.

God admonished Ezekiel about this. (Ezekiel 3:10) He told him to let all of His words sink deep into his own heart first before sharing them with others. He told Ezekiel to listen to His words carefully for Himself. This is a lesson we need to apply every moment of every day.

Our heart is the center of who we are. We feel with our heart, but we also make decisions with our heart. What is in our heart affects every part of our life. We must make sure that we plant the right things in our hearts. God's words will only bear much fruit in us if they are planted deeply into the good soil of our heart.

For this to happen, we have to listen carefully to every word God speaks to our heart by His Spirit and to every word we read in the Bible. We must not hurry through our Bible reading just to get done with a certain passage. It is God's living Word to us, and He has a message just for us, if we are ready to take it and act upon it. I pray we will all do this faithfully every day.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Ezekiel 6-8.