"So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” 9 They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
--Luke 22:8-13Jesus spoke to Peter and John, and they listened and went and did as he said. But did they hear him? There's a difference between being listened to and being heard. We go about our lives living before God and obeying and listening to his Word, and when God shows up we seem surprised! Luke noted that there may have been some surprise or low expectations for such a specific request to happen just as Jesus had said.
I find that in student ministry, sometimes there's a great chasm in families between being listened to versus being heard. What do parents say to their kids all the time? "Listen to me!" or "You're not listening to me!" I see teens crying out for the opposite from their parents as their hearts cry "Please hear me!". And teens who aren't heard act out their rejection through turning inward or becoming more rebellious in order to oppose the parent out of spite for not "hearing."
Parents want to be listened to=authority. Teens want to be heard=recognition/respect.
We have a lot to learn in listening to God's revelation to us versus hearing. We listen through obedience. We hear through faith and move in response to seeing God moving in our world. When God doesn't move, we think it's God that's moved. Instead, I believe that we've stopped hearing His heart, and we've settled for merely listening to the Word in the form of ritual and tradition. It makes us feel like we're doing something for God, when the heart of the law is faith in Christ, not faith in the law.
Listen to God. Hear God. Be moved.
1 comments:
Yes, it is amazing what our teens will do to "be heard"...parents see it as rebellion, when it can often be tied right back to lack of effective communication...not an easy task, but we must truly LISTEN to our teens and LET them know we HEAR them. God HEARS them. Communication is so important! Great post!
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