“The Next Spiritual Journey” Day 3: Sometimes the Lord is speaking, but we have put Him on “mute.”

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

All through the Old Testament, we see references to the children of Israel refusing to hear what the Lord had to say. It wasn’t that the Lord wasn’t speaking to them. It wasn’t that the prophets weren’t making the voice of the Lord known to them. Rather, they couldn’t hear because their hearts were closed to what God had to say.

Jeremiah—with great consternation—pointed out the dynamic that the people of God, were “deaf” to Him.

“To whom shall I (Jeremiah) speak and give warning That they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed [absolutely deaf to God] And they cannot listen. Behold, the word of the Lord has become a reprimand and an object of scorn to them; They have no delight in it.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭6‬:‭10‬ ‭AMP‬‬

Jesus pointed out to the religious leaders that His word was rejected by them because they had made no place for it.

“I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you plan to kill Me, because My word has no place [to grow] in you [and it makes no change in your heart]. Why do you misunderstand what I am saying? It is because [your spiritual ears are deaf and] you are unable to hear [the truth of] My word.”

‭‭John‬ ‭8‬:‭37‬, ‭43‬ ‭AMP‬‬

Just before Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death, He challenged the religious leaders with the fact that their refusal to believe the truth concerning Jesus Christ, was in line with how their fathers always rejected what God was saying.

“You stiff-necked and stubborn people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are always actively resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing just as your fathers did.“

‭‭Acts‬ ‭7‬:‭51‬ ‭AMP‬‬

Now, we may read about others rejecting the word of the Lord and not realize that in some way or another, we are doing something very similar.

Many years ago, the Lord spoke to me, saying, “Janet, what you think you know about Me, is keeping you from truly knowing Me.“ Of course, I loved the Lord and thought that I already truly knew Him. And—to a certain extent—that was true. But therein was the problem: My knowledge of Him was only to a certain extent; that extent being defined by what I had assumed to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about Him. My assumptions limited my ability to go further, limited my ability to go into a deeper knowledge, a deeper understanding of the Lord.

As the Lord inspired me to say to someone recently: Sometimes we can’t hear from the Lord in terms of direction, in terms of an answer, because we have limited the instruction we will “hear.” In other words, we have—on some level—decided the parameters within which the answer should come. So quite inadvertently (perhaps), we edit out, or block, any instruction, any word, that doesn’t fit into what we have decided the answer looks like. So, we may be actually blocking the voice of the Lord because what He has to say, falls within the area of what we will not consider.

In our opening scripture, the apostle Paul is pointing out the fact that our thoughts, if coming strictly from our own inner resources without the benefit of the Holy Spirit, fall short of being able to understand things of a spiritual nature.

Child of God, let’s make sure that our hearts and minds stay open to the voice of the Lord. Let’s make sure that we have not imposed artificial limits on our knowledge of God, or our ability to hear from Him, by stubbornly clinging to old ways, unrenewed ways of being and doing, and yes, old ways of thinking.

Lord willing, we’ll talk more about this next time.

Peace to you.

Jesus is coming! Get ready for Him!