People will not speak to you when they know you will not listen to anything they have to say.
John 9:27 says,” I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?”
Jesus had restored sight to a blind man. The religious leaders asked him who had restored his sight. He told them it was a man called Jesus. They didn’t want to believe this, so they kept asking him the same question.
Instead of asking the man the same question over and again, perhaps they should have asked themselves why they did not listen to the man. In a way the man was saying to the religious leaders, “you people are so harsh in heart that no one can speak to you. You don’t listen so why should I talk.”
Long before this, we see this very thing in 1 Samuel 25:3 when scripture describes a man named Nabal in this way. It says, “But the man (Nabal) was harsh and evil in his doings. And in 1 Samuel 25:17 it says, “For he is such a scoundrel that one cannot speak to him.”
Nabal had disrespected King David and his men, but he rejected this when his people told him what he had done. David was going to kill Nabal and his family for his disrespect. Describing Nabal as a scoundrel seems to be a harsh, but God wants us to understand how being harsh of heart keeps us from listening to wisdom and insight.
A scoundrel is a dishonorable person, a person who is mean and unprincipled and who lacks morale integrity. This person will often act badly towards others, and they will not care about that. They will act harmful towards the harmless and with evil towards the good.
This was an accurate description of the religious leaders of Jesus time. They did not care about others or the condition of others. They were mean and evil and hateful toward those who were the least among people. They sought respect but they did not give respect.
They wanted others to listen to them, but it was hard for others to speak to them. They were the smartest and most intelligent of people, yet they acted with stupidity and without reason. This is why they could not listen to anyone. They could not speak about themselves, only about others.
Because they had position and status they believed this meant they had knowledge and understanding superior to others. Unfortunately, today we have many people around us like this and we are forced to live with the decisions they make.
The Lord wants us to know that having good understanding and wisdom does not come to us because of the position or status we have in life. And likewise, having position and status does not mean we have good understanding and wisdom and intelligence.
We are all just a short distance from being like and walking in the steps of Nabal. When it is hard for others to hear us, it will be hard for them to speak to us. If the Lord cannot speak to us, we will not be able to hear Him. The Lord is always trying to answer the questions we would never ask ourselves.
Today, perhaps He is saying to us, the reason we do not get the answers we want in life is because we are asking the wrong questions. Perhaps we want Him to listen to us more than we want to listen to Him.
Perhaps the reason we do not make wise decisions is because we do not listen to someone who makes better decisions than us. If we never ask if we are the reason things are going bad, we will likely never accept when others tell us we are the reason things are bad. If things are not going well for you, it may be because you do not hear when you are told you are not acting well towards others.
Nabal acted with disrespect toward David. He didn’t think much of David. Nabal was stupid for behaving the way he did. Unfortunately, today we have a lot more people like Nabal around us. We could be one of those.
It doesn’t matter that you are successful, educated or highly placed in society, when you do not ask yourself if you are the problem you always see with others, you will likely say things that make no sense to those looking for you to make sense in what you say.
If you want people to listen to you, you must be someone people can speak to. The Lord is our example. We can always speak to Him. He will always be there waiting to hear us. When all we want is for people to hear us and go away, they will hear, they will go away and they will never return.
Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
Live Delivered 