Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

The first command is to hear.  What contributes to good hearing, to genuine heart-hearing rather than mere ear-hearing (or not hearing at all), to become one who hears God well?

Hearing is nurtured in silence.  Our world is a noisy one.  Our “inner world” can be very noisy too.  Before we can hear God well, we need to learn how to quiet all the noisiness that so easily fills our lives.  What if, before reading Scripture or praying, we simply sat in silence before the Lord and his Word?  What if, after we had finished our reading or praying, we simply sat in silence for a few moments more?

Hearing requires patience.  How many times have you been part of a conversation that suddenly took an unexpected turn, a turn into Very Important Territory?  You’ve been talking about this and that, enjoying each other’s company, and then … It grows quiet for a bit.  And then, “May I talk with you about something?”  And then we have to wait patiently, allow the other person the time and space to find what they need to say, and to say it.  The most important thing we can do in that moment is to wait patiently, right?

… and practice.  It’s possible to become better listeners, to God, to one another, in our families, with our friends and neighbors.  But hearing well doesn’t come easily or naturally to most of us. Ever do that hand-rolling motion that communicates, “C’mon, c’mon, get on with it, get to the point!”?  Maybe even do that with God?  We want to “cut to the chase,” move on to “solutions,” fix the problem, offer our wisdom, get back to what we’re doing.

Is it possible that God often wants to say  t  h  i  s   m  u  c  h  to us, and we only give him time for thismuch?

Hearing focuses on relationships.  On developing and reinforcing relationships, sustaining and supporting them, on expanding the capacities of those people and those relationships for love and fruitfulness.

Good carpenters measure twice and cut once.  Good hearers listen first, listen well, deeply, attentively patiently (and maybe more than once!) and then move on to whatever should come next.

Where are you experiencing some resistance to this kind of hearing?  What is the help you’d like to ask God for to grow as one who hears well?  What is a step you could take to grow as one who hears God more fully?