I love reading the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5 through to the end of chapter 7. It always brings such life and realignment to my life every time I read it. I encourage you to take some time to digest it. But in the reading of it, I always find the heart of God, the true character and nature of Jesus and in this, the call of my life as a Christian to walk out and grow in.
The meaning of the word of Beatitudes means “supreme blessedness” so if you want to be blessed then I would encourage you to not only read it, but spend your life pursuing it as a heart way of living.
Last night I had this picture of a person, a friend of mine, whose ears were so blocked that she couldn’t hear anything. I find this in a lot of places I walk into, many many christians who are not hearing the voice of God, whose ears have blocked up and no longer hearing what God is saying.
Along with that picture, one thing I am noticing a lot of at the moment is the word “communication” and the supposed lack of communication but what I am actually finding is there is communication but the speakers and receivers are not coming into the same understanding of what is being said or are not hearing the same thing.
Someone can speak something but another person will receive it how they want to hear it, or perhaps how they put their own interpretation on it through what they are used to.
And the same thing happens with the Lord and our communication with him. He will say one thing to us and we then interpret it through our lens and what we believe is being said, or perhaps how we want to interpret it depending on what we want to do, instead of a pure clear line without interference. This is why I find the Beatitudes so good to read and bring me back to the heart of Jesus if I have strayed unknowingly from the pure gospel of Christ.
Apart from the cartoon above where we are so busy listening to everything else and there is so much noise and busyness in our world that we don't have time for sitting and listening to his voice, there are also other things that block up our ears from hearing what the Lord might be saying. Here are some scriptures that speak to a couple of things.
2 Timothy 4:3 is a powerful scripture. “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
Or another powerful scripture is Prov 21:13 “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered”.
Both of these scriptures speak for themselves but they are powerful scriptures that are worth taking the time and asking the Lord if we are only listening and gathering around us people and teachers that we agree with. Or perhaps we are shutting our ears to the needs around us because we don’t want to respond, or we judge a situation seen from our eyes and not perhaps the Lords and don’t act accordingly. I have a situation I am struggling with at the moment with a continual cry for help, but I don’t want to become hardened to sin’s deceitfulness and so am asking the way forward in this from the Lord.
It is easy to become hardened to situations or circumstances if we don’t want to help, or cannot help at one time or another. The key is to keep ‘soft’ in our spirit and hearing what the Lord is saying in matters and respond accordingly. Our God is a generous God and he will supply all of our needs according to his glorious riches and knowing this and knowing that we don’t need to worry about tomorrow, we can step out in faith in today and the need in front of us today knowing that God will meet us in our time of need. If you find yourself holding back in areas, ask the Lord the deeper questions of the heart as to why you might be holding back.
Another thing I have noticed as to why people get blocked ears to the Lord is because God has spoken in the past but we have not responded and so we start to go deaf to what He is saying.
So I encourage you today if you are struggling to hear from the Lord, spend some time with Him, come aside from the busyness of life and ask him to remove any blockage that might be hindering you hearing His voice. Be willing to hear what he would say to you as sometimes it is not always easy to receive the truth, but the truth sets us free and sets us in a place of clear communication once again with the Lord and with those around us.