Hearing

What we listen to is very important. How do you listen? Do you listen with your calculations, through your predictions, through your ambitions, doubts, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the filter of your flesh, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own thoughts on the matter. Faith can only be based on the Word of God.

I Corinthians 14:10 There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

Proverbs 19:27 Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.

Mark 4:23-25 Jesus said, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 24 Then He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. 25 For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”

God uses your measuring stick. “The worst of all listeners is the man who does nothing but listens.” Charles Dickens

Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

It takes the same faith to become born-again as it does to be healed.

1 Peter 2:24 Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

Why is it two different people can hear the same message and one receive healing and the other does not? It is based on how they received the Word of God. One received it as unchangeable truth and the other received it with skepticism and doubt.

1 Thessalonians 2:13 For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

How well have you prepared your heart to receive from God?

Hebrews 4:2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the Word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

The Parable of the Sower is actually a parable of the heart.

Luke 8:11-15 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 

12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. (sozo)

13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 

14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 

15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the Word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

The devil comes to steal the Word from your heart because he knows if he doesn’t you’ll use it to enforce his defeat. He will tell you things like healing is not for today. Even if it were, it’s not for you.

Matthew 13:13-15 Jesus said, “Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; 15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’”

How do you receive healing? The same way your receive anything else from God, by believing His Word is true regardless of how you feel or how the circumstances look.

Psalm 107:20 He sent His Word and healed them, And delivered them from their destructions.

Isaiah 55:11 God said, “So shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

That doesn’t mean things will automatically happen just because you’ve read a Scripture. You must act upon that Word though faith.

James 2:20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works (corresponding actions) is dead?

How is this done? By acting as if the Word of God is so. Or, by refusing to act any other way than what the Word says. You don’t get results by focusing on the problem. You get results by focusing on His Word.