Tag: Hear

Posted on

The listen promise.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land, be careful not to forget the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy‬ ‭6‬:‭10‬-‭12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Just before this promise passage in Deuteronomy, God declared the “Hear O Israel” or Shema – the listen command that is still spoken by millions of Jewish people today. God follows it up with announcing the fulfillment of a very long promise made to the Jewish patriarchs, Abram, Isaac & Jacob. That is 400 to 430 years from promise to fulfillment! In modern times, we have absolutely no concept of a time-span like that. It is currently November 4, 2024 (yes! the day before the big election between Donald Trump & Kamala Harris). America is only 248 years old! Most of us barely know our own country’s history let alone remember any promises that God may have made to someone that long ago.

Israel and God’s chosen people have a really long memory and an even longer story! When you’ve been through the struggles of being a nomadic people for a very long time and God promises their own land, and controlling their own destiny- it’s a very big deal. Oh, what joy must have swelled in the hearts of the people as they heard God’s promise of this new land. God said the land was basically “move in” ready, describing it as cities they didn’t need to build and housing fully stocked with food they did not work and toil over in the fields. The lifeline of water! The sweet delicacies of grapes and multipurpose olive oil. Ah, was it just a dream? No, God says it’s real and coming soon. What the catch? No catch really, just to remember the Lord that rescued them from slavery, delivering them from years of wandering and captivity. “Just remember me!” God says.

Dan and Chip Heath wrote a book back in 2007 called Made to Stick and writes about the idea of the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge. Once we know something, and we are familiar and comfortable not just knowing it, but talking about a subject, we begin to assume everyone listening already knows the subject as well. As we speak about it, we sort of take shortcuts instead of taking the time for people unfamiliar with topic to catch up.

The Jewish people and their leaders had lived through a really long and arduous journey. It was such an embedded cultural experience that outsiders could not relate to their story at all. One way the people fought against the curse of knowledge when it came to their children and grandchildren is they told the old stories in totality over and over again. Their family meal times and cultural celebrations were all dedicated to telling the story of who they were and how God rescued them. As modern parents and modern children we struggle to tell, and re-tell, and re-tell the stories of life, of faith and of God’s blessing or divine intervention because we fear sounding old, out-dated and out of touch. Our children may not help when they roll their eyes and say, “oh, here we go again… talking about the old days!” But when we don’t tell the stories and our children bristle at the slow-paced talks around dinners or celebrations, there is much to be lost! It’s more than just “back in my day…” when candy was a nickel and gas was a quarter! It’s stories of unbelievable hardship or overcoming years of cyclical dysfunction or addictions in families. It’s stories of being very poor, but never realizing it. But really the old stories remind us of the power of Christ to redeem and restore a life and be able to leave a legacy for the future. These stories contain opportunities for children or grandchildren to pickup the memory stones of their parents and use them to pave a whole new path to glorify God!

The people in these very old Bible stories, lived a difficult life, heard God’s promises and many were able to experience the fulfillment of those promises within their lifetime. What promises of God are we not talking about, not sharing with the next generation? What promises have we believed and course-corrected our life to be obedient to God REMEMBERING Him in all things? If we do not speak of these things, if we do not tell the stories of God’s grace and miracles, our children and grandchildren may never know why we are so passionate about our faith in Jesus! To quote God, “Repeat them again and again to your children.”

Prayer

Dad,
Oh, that it would not be said of me that I did not tell the amazing stories of your grace and power to change my life! I remember and I give thanks that you did rescue me from slavery, from son, from my stubborn determination to live my life my way. I can never forget what you save me from! With that, give me courage to continue to tell my story and others might know of your mercy. Amen.

Posted on

The mystery of a good story.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“His disciples came and asked him, “Why do you use parables when you talk to the people?” He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. That is why I use these parables, For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭13‬:‭10‬-‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jesus’ stories, his parables are fun, sticky and multifaceted. You can read them once or a hundred times and get so much out of them. Here, Matthew records the story of the farmer sowing seed. Or, is it a story of the receptivity of the soil? Hmmm. After he tells the story, he says one his often quoted phrases, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

One of the brave followers of Jesus simply asks him straight out, “Why?” Why stories? Why parables? If you search Rabbi teaching methods, you’ll find a mixed bag. Yes, parables were common and there were hundreds of them. And, parables we’re used, but Jesus stories were by far the ones more durable in antiquity.

The curious disciple’s question yielded an answer from Jesus. Which was rare, compared to how many questions Jesus retorted back to his audience. Jesus said that his disciples, his apprentices, were given a special pass to understanding what he called the “mysteries” of God. Wow. The mysteries, the secrets of God?

Jesus used this word, mystḗrion (the root of the English term, “mystery”) . But, in the Bible, a “mystery” is not something unknowable. Rather, it is what can only be known through revelation, i.e. because God reveals it. So, parables were a teaching style to engage the listener, creating a curiosity so the listener would WANT to learn. Which is so cool! When someone comes to hear a lecture, a teaching, a speech or a TED-talk, they are supposed to be listening with all five senses. They should see, hear, feel, touch and even taste. Sure the last two may need some help with an object in hand, like a fresh apple off a tree. But Jesus is telling them (and us), there is another sense that should be brought to the event. One should bring a spiritual sense of what is happening and what God is up to. I wouldn’t call it a sixth sense, because that gets confused with some metaphysical mysticism.

Jesus tells his followers that those who listen beyond their physical eyes and ears will see and hear God at work! The parable becomes like a whisper when someone wants you to lean in, get close, so you can focus, blocking out all other distractions because you really want to learn and understand. Those learners, those curious, will be given the gift of understanding the mystery and have an abundance of knowledge. Jesus wanted his students to be the kind of people who don’t just show up to hear what the speaker would be saying or doing, but to be extra curious of understanding of what God is doing. Our job, in almost any situation we find ourselves in, is to fully engage with every physical sense we can to be attentive, but also be fully aware that God is always up to something MORE and spectacularly, spiritually, mysterious!

Prayer

Dad,
You are always at work. I miss seeing that so often because I am distracted by so many other things. Things that I think are important, but in comparison to your eternal perspective, they are not. There was an old phrase I remember hearing, that may not be true at all. Someone was said to be “so spiritually minded that they are no earthly good.” I am often distracted by so many “earthly good” thoughts or deeds that I miss the spiritually minded completely. I think your vantage point is so much better than ours! Help me see, as often as I can, your mysteries of heaven.