Listening and Responsibility

   There is a three-fold process in listening, in actually making use of what we learn from this exercise:

   1. Wanting to hear what the other person has to say, treating it as important.

   2. Listening, really paying attention to what is being said.

   3. Acting on what you heard, not only hearing what was said, but realizing the importance of the words, and treating them as ones worth heeding.

   A friend was talking to me yesterday about something that I had written in this blog a few days past. My comment to him was that my primary purpose of this whole project was to record what I felt like God was saying to me as I responded to any Scripture for that day. If anyone else read it and it helped them in some way, that was just added gravy on the meat loaf.

   He reminded me that it could be that one of the reasons I was putting all of this down, was that people might read it, and that their lives might be enriched, or challenged, or whatever, by what God was saying. He might be saying those same things to them, only through a different medium.

   Moses repeated the words of God to the Israelites with the preface "Thus saith the Lord", but the false prophets also told some of the kings words that the monarchs wanted to hear, and they used the same preface. There is a very real responsibility to say that these words come from God.

   So, I read this morning, Jesus' words from John 8:

   " Yet I do not seek my own glory;"

   And I do not want to write just so a few people might say that it was good. I want my words to be an accurate rendition of what I heard from God, and, if that is so, then these can speak to them as well.

   So, I hear God giving me some responsibilities along with all of this:

   1. Listen, really listen.

   2. Act on what I hear, in my life, in my attitudes, in my conduct, and even in my writing.

   3. Put the credit for it all in the right place.

   Now the responsibility with what the words say is passed on to others, and they must do the same. They must discern, listen, and then respond appropriately.

   My prayer, as I began this morning, was that I would correctly hear from God, that I would see how all of that applied in my own life, and then that I would be able to communicate those words, without error, to any others that might read. I pray that I did.