Listen and Obey?
When I was pregnant with our oldest daughter, Reid, I was crazy sick… so sick that I barely had the mental space to think deeply about anything. It was during that season that Tim decided to ask me to pray about moving to Florida to help plant a church.
Let’s just say it wasn’t Tim’s best emotionally aware moment.
Florida? No thanks. Sounds like alligators and humidity and I don’t like either. On top of that, our life was in Michigan and I could not think of a worse idea. Moving away from everything we’ve ever known sounded pretty heartbreaking.
In the quiet moments over the next few months that followed, I could hear God prompting us to go. But, it wasn’t something I felt willing to do, so I stopped spending time with Him. My heart began to grow hard over the thought of moving.
One weekend when Tim was out of town, I remember sorting through some things and finding my journal from college. Over and over again I read my own words, “God I want to go anywhere you want me to go, do anything you want me to do. I just want to tell people about you.” Page after page I declared that my life was His. I just wanted to follow Him.
At that moment, God broke through my hard heart to remind me that He wanted us to move to Florida.
And again, although I heard Him, moving was still something I wasn’t willing to do.
In our culture, listening means that we give attention to a sound. But in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for listen is “shema”.
Shema has a double meaning: to hear and take action.
Listen and obey.
In Hebrew, this word does not differentiate between hearing, listening, or obeying. It assumes all three happen when God speaks. Crazy, right?
I wish I had realized that all those years ago. Eventually, I came around.
When our daughter arrived I would sneak into her room to pray over her and watch her sleep. One night as I prayed, these words poured out: “Reid, I want you to go anywhere God wants you to go, do anything God wants you to do, I just want you to follow Him.”
I was overwhelmed by these familiar words. How could I raise Reid to follow God if I wouldn’t do it myself?
God gently whispered to me again, and this time something inside me shifted. Instead of just hearing Him, my heart was ready to obey Him.
I wonder, what have you heard God say to you more than once and have refused to take action?
