To Listen is to Do: Practical implications of the word “hear” (שׁמע) in the Shema (Pt 2)

In the previous post I wrote about the first three principles I learned:

1. Recognize My Need to Love Jesus
2. Intentionality-Being Purposeful in My Pursuit of Jesus
3. Hunger-To Pursue Him

Here are the remaining principles:

4. Practice Spiritual Disciplines

I alluded to this in the previous post but found comfort in a renewed focus on the disciplines and how others practiced. Personally, the Lord gave me a new hunger for His Word, prayer, and learning to listen to His voice. After reading RT Kendall and listening to Craig Keener’s story, I began reading large chunks of scripture daily. The Lord was waking me up as early as 3:30 am and I began taking 2-3 hours to read, pray, and listen to the Lord before I began my day. After 20+ years of ministry, I experienced a deep hunger for Him that resulted in a love for the basic disciplines believers have known for centuries.

It would be dishonest to say I didn’t love His Word, pray, or listen to the Lord before this experience. I loved reading the Bible and spent time in it daily. I prayed daily but rarely listened to the Lord. In His goodness, He would make things plain to Christy and me, but it wasn’t due to our diligent listening and seeking the Lord. 

Rather than looking for a quick answer to my pressing questions, the Lord allowed me to rekindle my love for Him as I read the Bible. At the time, I was reading the New Testament once a month. This equaled about 10 chapters a day. I began to hear His voice as I prayed with a small group of guys on a 5 am Zoom call once a week. Often I would pause my work, close my eyes, and pray. I felt a closeness I’d never experienced. Psalm 61:1 says it so wonderfully:

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer

Psalm 61:1

While this Psalm is a lament, the writer expresses how God protected His people in the past, shows God hears our prayer, asks Him to prolong his life and his line, and tells how He will be praised. (Barry, John D., Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, Michael S. Heiser, Miles Custis, Elliot Ritzema, Matthew M. Whitehead, Michael R. Grigoni, and David Bomar. Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016.)

Practicing these spiritual disciplines enabled me to slow down and learn to hear the Lord in His timing and way. They helped me build confidence as I learned to hear His voice. There would be several times when this proved incredibly helpful as we began to step out in faith to follow His leading to Oklahoma City. 

As the days turned into months, I learned how the daily, habitual practice of spiritual disciplines helped clarify my questions to the Lord. I began to more clearly see how He worked through a process rather than a single event (not that He doesn’t).

Since moving to OKC, I’ve encouraged several people waiting to hear from the Lord. To a person, their intake of Bible reading, prayer time, listening, and other spiritual disciplines has increased dramatically. Each person, while struggling through the wait, has grown spiritually and is encouraging others to do the same.

5. Praying for the Supernatural

This was new to me/us. Sort of. Looking back, I’ve always believed God can do and does things things that are hard to explain. Before our experience with the gifts, I heard God’s internal audible voice, we’ve seen Him provide for us monetarily in unexplainable ways, and we’ve seen Him answer specific prayers in miraculous ways. Somehow these were seen in a different light; as if they should certainly be prayed for and expected, but not really. (Only in times of emergency, special circumstances, or tradition-approved methods.)

As I listened to the Lord, I began becoming more open to prophetic words from believers, asking God for and paying attention to dreams, and trusting God to show us things that only He could do.

As we began to “earnestly desire” and “test” the prophetic words we gratefully received from others, we not only learned about a gift that was foreign to us, we began to see the heart behind this gift was love. 

I remember one brother sharing with us that God would be moving us from Ky to Oklahoma. Before our meeting, he had written down what he thought was the town to which we would move and shared it with us. He was so kind and loving toward us, but his specific word was wrong. In the Lord’s kindness, He allowed us to diligently search for Him and test this word by visiting the town. Our spirits agreed that this town was not the place we were to land despite how everything made sense on paper. 

In learning to listen through a prophetic word we got to practice how to biblically test a prophecy while not casting the gift or the love the brother had for us to the side. We learned to carefully ask prophetically gifted people to pray for us and share anything the Lord may be impressing on them. The most encouraging prophetic word came from a brother who had no idea who we were. It felt like he read Christy and I like a book!

6. Pay Attention to Circumstances

Christy and I saw the Lord working through circumstances with our church family and my work. We transitioned from one church to another in Kentucky and were having difficulty finding a body of believers who were open to biblically practicing spiritual gifts. While the church we were members of was active, we didn’t feel like we fit in. I believe this was not their fault. This church loved the Lord, had a strong preaching, music, and outreach ministry, and loved us from day one.

The Lord used our church experience in tandem with the above to provide more evidence that He was doing a major work in our lives. 

At the same time, I knew my time with the convention was going to be coming to an end. I had been working through some difficult issues at work while at the same time realizing that I couldn’t openly share our desire to grow in the gifts with most of my coworkers or churches I served. 

I’m incredibly grateful for my time with the convention, my coworkers, and church leaders, but we felt the Lord was even using this as a confirmation that He was preparing us for the next thing. 

7. Move Forward with Next Steps

As Christy and I listened to the Lord for almost two years before moving, we learned the importance of taking the next step. As we stepped out, we learned that some of our actions were not what the Lord wanted and He either kindly stopped us, or let us keep moving forward for a time to learn from Him. His correction was always gracious and kind.

We learned that when we step out in faith and our actions are bathed in prayer and trust the Lord will guide us. He was teaching us the importance of the process. The process of learning to listen in a way where we could recognize His voice and discern whether we needed to wait or act was coming through patience and practice. 

As we got closer to moving, our next steps looked much like a checklist. Each time got ready to check off the next box, we had to learn a lesson of faith and trust that was new to us. We learned to cry out to Him in desperation at times. We learned to trust each other’s ability to hear from the Lord when one of us was not sure. We learned that stepping out in faith isn’t all that comfortable. 

For us, the next steps throughout this process were often big ones. They included when to put the house up for sale, in whom to confide about our situation and when to do it, which home in OKC we bid on and which ones to pass up, and what to do about my job search once we arrived. These drove us to pray again and again. We got better with patience and a little better at trusting the Lord’s timing.