Shema (Listen) to God’s Heart
My Bible study today had one of the most important verses in all of written Scripture. From Deuteronomy 6:4, it’s called “The Shema” and in The Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) it reads…
D'varim (Deu) 6:4 CJB
[4] “Sh’ma, Yisra’el! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad [Hear, Isra’el! Adonai our God, Adonai is one];
https://bible.com/bible/1275/deu.6.4.CJB
I wanted to create an image that spoke that powerful message so worth listening to. LISTEN! Listen, Israel. Listen, people. Listen, everyone. Just listen. God’s Word is speaking, and it’s pouring out love you can hear, if you will just listen.
When I was running from God and doing things my own way, the thing I really needed to do was listen. I asked God all the “why” questions, but I didn’t listen for His answer, so I didn’t hear the loving words He was speaking to me. He used my own pride against me and got me to a place where I felt stuck (fake praying in a church, so I would look like everyone else there) to slow me down enough to listen and hear. And my life has never been the same.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that the words He spoke to me that night were from that Scripture, and I’d not actually realized it. See, the women in the church were gathered around me because they thought the new “sinner” in their midst was praying to be saved. And I had my head buried in my hands to hide that I was faking while trying to figure out how to get out of the situation. That’s when I clearly heard a voice speak, and it said, “You’re not rejecting these people, and you’re not rejecting all the people who hurt you in your life. You’re rejecting me, and I’ve never done anything to hurt you.”
He was speaking directly to me to listen to Him and let Him (not people) be my ONLY (Hebrew word echad) Lord and God. That word means both one and only, and it begs us to hear His voice and tune out all the others.
Even my voice, though I write from my heart and the testimonies God has given me, is not the main voice you should listen to. I pray those who read my blog let my voice lead to The One and Only, Alpha and Omega, First and Last, The Beginning and The End, Yahveh Almighty. And when they hear Him, may they make Him their own One and Only… Forever!
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Beauty Out of Focus
Close Focus Lens Demo by Flickr User Jody Roberts, CC License = Attribution
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What does it take for beauty to be beautiful? Perception. Whether it’s a beautiful look, sound, touch, smell, or thought, it must be perceived. We can’t smell with a stuffy nose, hear when we’re deaf, or see when we’re blind, even if those disabilities are temporary. I think we all get out of focus at times, and I think it affects all our senses.
Our lack of perception does not change the quality or beauty of the thing we cannot seem to grasp. That includes trying to see ourselves through God’s eyes, so we can trust His direction for our lives. We fail over and over, and we cannot perceive that God sees us with a love that causes Him to forgive us over and over. We wallow in guilt and feel unworthy, but God wants to swaddle us in His love and help us to understand that His worth is what matters overall.
Imagine if you created something, and you saw it as perfect and wonderful, but someone else came along and kept saying it was horrible. That’s part of the lie the enemy of our souls has tried to create in us since God placed Adam and Eve in the garden. While God gave them every tree except one, the enemy changed their focus and perception to where that one looked greater than everything else they had with God and in the garden. The enemy made them believe they were incomplete without that one provision, and they fell for it–literally.
These days, we have the blood of Christ to cover our imperfections, so God sees us through that. We have God’s written word, so we can understand how He sees us. But, we still have human eyes and human perceptions, so we often see things incorrectly and get ourselves and our lives out of focus. We may focus on a beauty or success that is not beauty or success in God’s eyes, or we may miss a God-given beauty or success completely. When we get out of focus, we end up in chaos and running around as if we are spiritually blind and deaf instead of walking according to God’s path and rhythm.
The lesson of focus has been made abundantly clear to me (no pun intended) through a week of chaos. While I did everything in my power to create a scenario for our authors to present and sell their books, every door I tried to open slammed shut. I wondered if we were missing out on God’s favor, or if we were just under attack. I was missing the mark on both accounts, and I only found my peace in God when I got my perception corrected through prayer.
Here’s what I learned: God called many people to carry His precious good news to the world. He has anointed us to present that message through a variety of methods, and many of those are in the arts. I believe our creativity is a gift from God whether we use it for Him or not. And, because it is a gift from God, it will do its best work when it is done for Him first and for ourselves last. If we get that turned around, we lose perception.
For our writer’s group, we were trying to create an event centered around sales rather than ministry. We thought success meant a lot of people coming to buy our products instead of a lot of people coming to hear a testimony of God’s gifts in our lives. Our perceptions were skewed by the cacophony of voices out there shouting words like marketing and SEO. It doesn’t help that the Christian book market is more than just a niche genre anymore. It holds its own and therefore needs just as much professionalism and proper presentation as any book topic out there. However, if we’re not careful, we can let the marketing become more important than the message.
Well, we learned our lesson, and now instead of wondering how we’re going to handle a bunch of people we can’t sell things to, we’re hoping we can minister to all of them. We did a lot of advertising, but only God knows what souls He is sending and what message He is wanting them to hear. Our job is to be sensitive, so we can perceive His voice and direction. He says in John 10:27 (NLT)… “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” If we keep our perception in Him, we can see and follow His leading, so we will not become blind leaders of blind followers. If we don’t, we may find even His beauty out of focus.
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Deaf by Discouragement
Covering His Ears by Flickr User Sharyn Morrow aka massdistraction, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works
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Remember the old commercials that said, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.”? I remember that even if I didn’t understand it when I heard it as a young child. I learned what it meant later, so I did understand by the time I heard a song by Carman where one lyric line said, “Because when God talks, even E.F. Hutton listens.” Well, in today’s reading from Exodus 6:2 through Exodus 6:13, we find people that are not listening so well…even to God.
We are now at the beginning of Parashah (portion) 14. The Hebrew word for it is Va’era and it means I appeared. It begins after Moses speaks to God asking why He allowed Pharaoh to treat the people so badly after the request to leave for three days to worship, and God’s answer that Moses would now see exactly what Yahveh had planned for Pharaoh. Now God goes on to say that He is the God who spoke and made covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but that He had never revealed His memorial name to anyone before Moses.
Yahveh tells Moses to tell the people that He has heard their groanings, and that He will set them free from the slavery of the Egyptians. He says they will be His people, and He will be their God. But then it says the people are too discouraged to listen. I’ve seen it in movies where a person is so distraught or worried that they are kind of “losing it” and won’t pay attention to anything that is going on around them. Usually it takes someone slapping them to snap them out of it. God doesn’t tell Moses to slap the people, but He doesn’t just accept their discouragement or refusal to listen.
Moses then argues that if the people won’t listen, surely Pharaoh will not listen either, especially to someone like him who is not a good speaker. But God commands both Moses and Aaron concerning their approach to both Pharaoh and to the house of Israel, and He tells them exactly what will happen in order to free Israel from slavery.
God always has a plan to set people free, be it us or those we love. Sometimes we are too discouraged to listen or to listen well. Sometimes those we love and care about are too discouraged to listen. But if we keep the communication with God open, we are promised that when we seek and search for Him with our whole hearts, we WILL find Him. And we know that once we find Him, there’s a much better chance that we will find the knowledge we need to follow His plan for our deliverance from whatever has us or those we love in bondage. Let us be encouraged, and let us continue to listen.
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Come Hear and Listen to Learn
If Today You Hear His Voice by Flickr User Sharon of Art4TheGlryOfGod, CC License = Attribution, No Derivative Works
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They say God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we can listen twice as much as we speak. I’ve never really liked that saying because I often learn while speaking, especially when I speak something that needs to be corrected. Somehow, that stays with me better. But, that doesn’t mean listening isn’t a skill we should all learn to perfect, and it doesn’t matter how many ears we have. The skill of listening is about process and application far more than it is just the ability to sense sounds.
In today’s reading from Deuteronomy 31:10 through Deuteronomy 31:13, we will read about the importance of hearing the Torah (word) of God. Again, because the verses are short, I will paste them here from The Complete Jewish Bible…
Notes: Moshe = Moses, Festival of Sukkot = Feast of Tabernacles/Booths, Sh’mittah = Freedom (from debt), Torah = Word/Law, Adonai = The Lord/Yahveh, Yarden = Jordan River
So, every seventh “Feast of Tabernacles,” when the children of Israel would build temporary shelters (one is a tent or sukkah, and the plural for tents is “sukkot”) to remind them of their time of wandering without having the word and law of God, they will read the whole law to everyone. They will read to all the seed of Abraham of every age, and to all the foreigners. No one should go without hearing the word of God, so all can have the chance to hear, learn, fear, and obey Him. No one will be able to claim ignorance of God’s law.
What’s interesting is that the Feast of Sukkot is the last of the fall feasts. It comes after Trumpets and Atonement. That means, people don’t hear a full reading of the law until the new year has begun, they have gone through the days of self-examination that precede Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and they have experienced the sacrifice for their sins. Basically, for Christian believers, that means we apply the word of God to our lives after we have become new through repentance and through atonement in The Blood of Yeshua. This gives yet another understanding to not putting new wine into old bottles.
As God calls us to teach others, we need to remember that our best lessons will come directly from our own testimonies. Call people to you to hear what God has done for you, and they will be able to learn what He can do for them. In Revelation 12:11, we learn that the children of God defeat the enemy by the word of their testimony and the blood of The Lamb. While Bible verses are living and powerful, they have much greater effect on those who have become new in Christ. We must be careful to lift God up by sharing what He has done for us far more often than throwing Him at people by using His Word as a condemning sword.
In The Complete Jewish Bible, there are 1620 instances of the word “hear” and another 445 of the word “listen.” If there’s that many more times that people hear but do not listen, maybe it has something to do with who is hearing the word. The smaller portion of instances go to listening because it takes a certain kind of heart to listen, but anyone with ears should be able to hear. It’s time for those of us who know God and have His word hidden in our hearts to make our testimonies known. Our praise and our stand on God’s word in our own lives will work to resist the enemy far more than shouting the written word at people who do not even care. Just remember to take your “vitamins,” that is “Vite ’em in” to your life story to come hear and listen to learn.
My prayer of blessing. May God bless many more of my sisters and brothers with the desire to write their testimonies, either in nonfiction devotions and articles or given through the words of their fictional characters. When you have a story and are not able to write it yourself, may God send you a scribe as He sent to the unlearned men with great testimonies of walking with Yeshua. Amen!
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September 16, 2014 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Bible Commentary, Bible study, Complete Jewish Bible, Deuteronomy, hear, learn, listen, listen to learn, obey, Scripture, Sukkot, Torah commentary, Torah Portions | Leave a comment