Be diligent to understand the meaning behind everything you hear, for as you do, more understanding will be given to you. Mark 4:24 (TPT)
Open Hearts – Hearing Series – Part 6
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
On every report card I took home from school, my teachers wrote, “Elizabeth is a great student. However, she needs to talk less and pay more attention in class.”
Paying attention has always been a bit of an issue for me. I easily get “lost with the fairies…” trail off into my own little world that is sometimes more real than the one I live in. (Creative much?) I’ve missed appointments, turned up to meetings two weeks early, missed important details, lost things, forgotten things… yep. My teachers were right. I STILL need to pay more attention.
But what do you pay attention to?
While lost in my own world, I’ve picked up on things that I may not have if I was paying attention to other things. I’m left with the question, what should get my attention? How should we “pay it” and who should we “pay” it to?
In chapter 4 of his book, Mark records Jesus as saying,
“Be diligent to understand the meaning behind everything you hear, for as you do, more understanding will be given to you. And according to the depth of your longing to understand, much more will be added to you. For those who listen with open hearts will receive more revelation. But those who don’t listen with open hearts will lose what little they think they have!” (Mark 4:24-25 TPT)
Listen with open hearts.
When you’re in a lecture, or you’re learning something new, there are a few different ways you can listen to and take in the information. You can listen to record, or memorise; the information is stored in your brain ready to be pulled up when you need it. This kind of listening is often buffeted with ambition and plans for success – it's conditioned by where the hearer wants to go and how they want to use the information to get them there.
Another way of listening, or paying attention, is to do so with the expectation of growth: growth that takes on its own form as what you learn opens up new ways of understanding the world and people around you. This kind of growth is not pre-framed with a certain destination in mind. It invites inward transformation knowing that what you learn will take you where you need to go.
It’s a kind of ‘paying attention’ that trusts, has faith, and longs to understand beyond your current capabilities.
“Those who listen with open hearts will receive more revelation…” They will uncover truths and graces and ideas and wonders beyond their wildest imaginations.
“But those who don’t listen with open hearts will lose what little they think they have…” They will grow smaller and smaller as their agenda for listening is only to further their own space in the world.
I suppose, it's not so much “what” you listen to, but “how” you listen. “Be diligent to understand the meaning BEHIND everything you hear.” There is always a “behind” to what is going on around us. You can listen to someone's anger and only see the trouble they’re in, or you can listen behind their anger and pay attention to why it’s there in the first place.
Pay attention to what is happening around you, but more than that, pay attention to what is going on behind it all.
Two people can sit under the same starry sky, observe the same spectacular sunrise, eat the same delicious feast, and experience two different things. And the difference is made by what they were paying attention to.
How will you pay attention? What will you see and hear behind it all?
If you listen through ears of love and mercy and see through eyes of faith, you’ll start to see wonders all around you.
Go to Part 7 – Word of Light »
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