You Heard What?

Never listen to anyone or anything who doesn’t listen to the Lord.

You heard what?  That is my message for today.

Sometimes, we try so hard to depend on the Lord that we actually become independent of Him. We all know that God is good to us. When we are in the middle of our troubles, we can often hear ourselves or others saying, “God is good to us.”  That would be true.

But we have also heard it said, “God helps those who helps themselves.”  This is not a statement of God’s.  It may be how we want to believe but there is no scripture reference to support this statement.  We are very self-seeking and impatient people.  When we do not hear God say what we want to hear, we turn to ourselves or to our social network to hear it.

And there are always people ready to say what you should not want to hear.  When they do this, they steal from you the glory of patience and dependence you should reserve for the Lord only.  The devil uses the feelings and emotions of weak people with loud mouths to cause us to believe we can do the good that God is slow to do.

Instead of waiting for God’s good come to us in the way we want it, we follow what we have heard others say to bring about the good we think is needed.  Our dependence becomes our independence because we listened to something we heard from a source that didn’t listen to the Lord.

Have you heard it said, “we must love the person but hate the sin?”  Well, I hope not because this is not a biblical statement.  Yet, many of us are easily influenced and predisposed to believe we must love everyone no matter how they live.  We should love everyone because God calls us to do that.  But loving how others live is not what we are called to do.

In Matthew 17:5, God says this about Jesus to Peter, James and John, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.  Hear Him!”  Listen!  We must stop listening to what we have heard from others and hear what the Lord is saying to us and about us.

Now hear this.  Our love for others should be part of the reason they would want to turn from what is or might be wrong to what is right.  If by our love, others are made to feel comfortable in their wrongs, perhaps our love is really not love at all.

The Lord probably scratches His head and says to us “you did what because you heard what?”  For sure, Jesus loved and still loves each of us no matter who we are.  But His love does not make us believe it is ok to live a life contrary to the life that is obedient to Him.  He loves us all and He lovingly asks and places the expectation on us all to sin no more.

We need to learn to stop acting on what others tell us or on what we say to ourselves.  We must learn to hear what God says to us about us. When we take what God says and shape it into what we want we open ourselves to live by statements of emotion and feelings.  You heard what?  That should be our own question of our own selves.

Emotions and feelings will lead you to believe if you are not loving then you are condemning. Jesus never condemned.  He does not ask us to judge or to condemn the behavior of others.  But by our attitudes others can judge their own behaviors and attitudes.  We need to make sure our attitudes are sound and founded on something other than feelings and emotions.

Our attitudes are one of the main reasons we live more by what we have heard or what we want to say, than by what really is.  In the book of Matthew, Jesus takes specific aim at teaching us to clean up our attitudes.  He wanted the people then, and guess what, He wants us today to base our attitudes on what the Word says to us about us more than on what we hear from ourselves or from others.

Matthew 5:43 Jesus says this.  “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

Jesus makes several of these type statements.  I call them His “you heard what?” statements.  He is telling the people don’t believe and act on all the things you hear from others.  People will make you emotional.  Your emotions will make you live by your feelings more than by factual realities.

Jesus wants you to live by what He says to you.  In a way He is saying listen to Me.  “I don’t want you to love on one hand and to hate on the other.” “Don’t listen to what you heard, listen to what I tell you.”

My mother used to tell me, “Don’t listen to anyone who does not listen to the Lord.” Why did Eve listen to the devil when we know the devil doesn’t listen to God?  The devil heard what was said but he didn’t believe what was said. Eve tried to make sense of what God had said in relation to what she heard the devil say.

How crazy is that?  If God says don’t, why would we listen to anyone or anything that says but you can now because you are smarter. Learn to do what God told the disciples.  Jesus is His beloved Son.  Listen to Him.  Never listen to what you have heard, seen, or read on Facebook by people who only listen to themselves and who want you to listen to them. They are simply trying to live their lives through your life.

Listen and hear the Lord.  Don’t put the Him in the position of saying to you, “you heard what?” 

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.