The need for holy listening

When I pooled the articles together for this issue of the Caledonia Times, I noticed something interesting. By happy circumstance there was an overall theme and tone to the issue... namely the need to listen. I am discovering that everybody wants to be heard and there are some who maintain that it is there right to be heard. Yet we need to stop and consider carefully that if all of us are talking and typing, who is going to stop talking and start listening. Might I suggest that listen is at the very core of what is to be a Christian? It is the start of obedience to God’s will for both ourselves and for others. It enables us to be followers and to be effective in our discipleship so that those around us are bless because we have listened, done and led as God has called and told us too. And yes I believe that God is still speaking to and enabling and leading his Church.

There is a verse of scripture that comes to mind here: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1.22) failing to connect our doing with our listening does not make us disobedient. It makes the Church and its ministry obtuse and thus irrelevant. It is the very thing that so many fear and recoil from though seemingly they fail to hear and heed both the Word and the Spirit. Failing to listen to God and what God asks of us makes us irrelevant because we have not heard and therefore have not received what was needed; to have something to offer and give, we must first listen and receive. The danger is not in being unconnected to the world through our life and ministry but being irrelevant to God. It is his mission, his call and we are his people and his Church.

I think you would agree that you and I cannot steer a parked car. God cannot guide the motionless Christian. There is no spiritual life without listening. We have stopped up our collective ears and we are going to do things the way we think they ought to be done. What we need to do is to stop and listen for the Shepherd’s voice. We need to hear him so that we can be led to and through the valley, even if it seems like death. We need to quiet ourselves so that we can listen and then respond in appropriate ways with fitting action in the required time.

Failing to listen to God as individuals and as community causes us to become obtuse and irrelevant. In turn we then fall way (like lost sheep) and face both death of personal life and destruction of our faith communities. It is only in listening that we follow and find life. It is only in Christ that we live and move and have our being. And the obvious implication is that we find it nowhere else but in God who is in Christ.

Holy listening helps us to discover where our service and our sacrifices are to be offered. Holy listening helps us to discover where our altars are – those places and spaces where we discover we are needed and are needed by God to offer ourselves to him and to neighbour. We make the sacrifice and offer the gifts that others might hear and see so that they might live.

Jason+