You’ve heard the phrase “eagle eyes”. It refers to a person who can see things from far away or spot things in a crowd of other things. My husband recently coined the phrase “eagle ears”. It means, as you would imagine, a person who can hear faint noises or hear things from far away.
Timmy has a spectacular set of eagle ears. When the front door opens, he hears it, even if he’s at the back of the house and the person opening the door is quiet about it. The other day, my husband was holding Timmy on his lap and cuddling him. Suddenly, Timmy began twisting forcefully out of my husband’s arms, trying to get down. Phil set him down, and Timmy made a beeline toward the front of the house. Then my husband heard the front door open. That time, Timmy had heard me before I even opened the door.
True, there are times I wish Timmy weren’t quite so clingy. But I love it how he’s absolutely delighted whenever I come home. I love seeing him run into the living room to greet me, wanting to be picked up immediately. I love hearing his little voice as he “talks” to me, telling me in his own way that he’s glad I’m home.
I bet God would love it too if we were that attentive to Him. How often does God show up, figuratively speaking, and we don’t even hear Him coming because the sound of His coming makes no difference to us? How often does He arrive, and we stay in the back of the house because we figure being in the same house with Him is close enough—or because we don’t care that He’s home? How often does God make His presence known, and we don’t bother getting down to see Him because we’re more interested in what we were doing before He showed up?
Granted, God’s Holy Spirit lives within each person who believes in Jesus Christ. So in a sense, God is always with us. But I’m talking here about the times when God shows up in a special way, such as when He wants to show us something or tell us something, and we’re oblivious.
If we had eagle ears for God’s voice, I bet we’d hear Him a lot more than we do now. That’s because God doesn’t just show up once in a while. He’s constantly coming to us to commune with us, and we don’t care or don’t know it.
Maybe the problem is that we don’t recognize the sounds of His arrival. We’re so caught up with what we’re doing that we don’t realize what we’ve just heard. It’s not that we don’t want to hear Him or don’t care; it’s that we don’t know how. We’d love to hear Him all day long, in the midst of this often chaotic craziness that is motherhood. But we don’t hear Him because we don’t recognize His daily voice. If He sounded like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, we’d get it. But He usually doesn’t, so we miss Him.
What can we do to fix the problem? It depends on what the problem is. If you aren’t interested in hearing from Him, you repent. You bow before God (literally or figuratively) and you ask Him to forgive you for your hard or apathetic heart. You ask Him to replace your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
If you want to hear Him but don’t know how, you ask Him to teach you. Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart so that you can see the blessed richness of His heart toward you and His desire to communicate with you—and so that you can then respond!
I long for the day in heaven when communication between me and God won’t be hard anymore. When my sin or lack of understanding won’t get in the way. When I’ll be able to see Him face to face and know Him fully, even as I am fully known.
But until then…until it’s obvious when God arrives, and until our hearts always long for His appearing…until then, let’s pray, and ask Him to fix our heart. Because I don’t want to miss out on even one second of when God wants to be with me.
I know you don’t either.
Ezekiel 36:26—“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (NIV)
Ephesians 1:18—I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 13:12—Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
2 Timothy 4:8—Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.