Listening Prayer
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What is Prayer?
What is Prayer?
PRAYER Dialogue between God and people, especially His covenant partners.
Prayer is not the end but a means to a end. To have a relationship with God.
In order to have a relationship you have to have a dialogue. If my relationships in life was mostly a monologue most people would not want to be around me. LOL
It can be draining when the other person is doing all the talking and your doing all the listening.
SCRIPTURES:
19 When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
28 Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;
3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.
1.
A person who's talking is giving away information. A person who's listening is receiving information. Who gets the best deal in that exchange?
You can hear when you are talking, but you can’t listen when you are talking. You can’t learn when your talking
You can only learn when you are listening
2. You won't reveal anything you'll later regret.
If you don't share a piece of information today, you can always share it tomorrow. Conversely, if you do share a piece of information today, you can never take it back again.
How many times have you revealed something and then later wished that you hadn't? Or expressed a thought you might better have kept to yourself? We've all had these experiences one time or another. The less you say, the smaller the chances you'll share information you wish you hadn't.
3. You won't say anything below your intelligence.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." I'm not suggesting you remain silent all the time. But it's all too easy to speak thoughtlessly, with insufficient information, or out of a wrong assumption.
In prayer we are very limited in our knowledge talking to someone who knows everything. We need to make a commitment to listening while in prayer.
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Illustration: close your eyes, now close your ears.
Did you notice that you needed assistance from your hands to close your ears but didn’t need assistance to close your eyes.
My point is that our ears were created to be open all the time.
If we had ear lids we would be late for work or church because we wouldn’t hear the alarm go off.
When I’m listening to a sermon I need the preacher to tell me twice when it comes to a scripture reference. When I got married only once because I had my wife to ask.
I have made a commitment to listen to my wife more. A lot of times I either wasn’t listening to her or forgot when she has made plans or something important is coming up.
Woman by nature are usually better at listening.
Men we listen great when we want to.
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How we listen expresses the value of the one talking.
If I think I have something of value to share with someone and they don’t have time to listen I won’t share it.
One of God’s love language is quality time and I wonder how much we are missing out because we are not taking the time to listen.
By the way most children need quality time.
If your kids are getting real rowdy, running crazy, and everything is chaos - you know what they need most of the time? They mom and dad to stop and sit down.
We think our teenagers and young people spend to much time on the phone.
But you know what are one of the biggest complaints of the this generation is that they can’t talk to their parents because their parents are the phone to much of the time.
Children spell love T I M E and it takes time to listen
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One of the most important words in the Bible is the word “hear”
9 He who has ears, let him hear.”
Everything in the kingdom depends upon whether or not we hear the word of God
Things change more when I hear His voice more than when He hears mine.
Hearing God’s voice has to become the singular quest of your heart, the sole pursuit that alone satisfies the great longings of your heart.
Does that mean when I go to the secret place that I hear His voice every time. Or sense His presence every time. No but faith says He’s pleased because I come to Him in faith.
My role in the secret place is to listen for anything God might want to speak.
If He doesn’t speak to me, my time spent in silent listening is not futile or in vain.
I haven’t missed something or failed to connect. I’ve done my part.
It is so important to me that I put myself in a posture of listening.
IF we stop listening to the Lord does He stop listening to us? According to Zechariah yes
10 do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear.
12 They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts.
13 “As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the Lord of hosts,
Hearing God’s voice in our prayer closet is the most important and rewarding part of having a prayer life.
We can hear His voice. He said in
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
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What is one area that causes to stop hearing the voice of God?
Matthew 13:11 NASB95
11 Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.
It says why it has not been granted in verse 15
Matthew 13:15 NASB95
15 For the heart of this people has become dull, With their ears they scarcely hear, And they have closed their eyes, Otherwise they would see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, And understand with their heart and return, And I would heal them.’
A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible3975. παχύνω
to thicken, i.e. (by impl.) to fatten (fig. stupefy or render callous):—wax gross.
Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) 4266 παχύνομαι
be unable to understand, formally, become calloused of heart
A callus is an area of thickened skin that forms as a response to repeated friction, pressure, or other irritation.
Callus skin is desensitized. Its also rough to the touch.
MANY people smoke day after day, month after month, year after year and all of a sudden their ability to breathe is impacted and the lungs become hard. A lung is supposed to be soft and pliable but when a person smokes like that, their lungs become hard and the air can’t penetrate them. You can read the Bible until you are blue in the face, but if it is being read by a hard heart, the Spirit won’t penetrate it.