daily devotionals for august 22nd today's scripture reading will be jeremiah 7 verses 23
and 24. but this is what i commanded them saying obey my voice and i will be your god
and you shall be my people and walk in all the ways that i have commanded you
that it may be well with you yet they did not obey or incline their ear but followed
the counsels and dictates of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward
i know this is old testament but it is still true today and we really want to hear
god's voice and obey him years ago bob and i were traveling i think it was
perhaps in connecticut somewhere around there and we saw a big billboard sign and it said
first you hear then you listen now it was for an advertisement for hearing aids but that just
stood out to me so strongly because we do we first hear you know if you hear a sound
and let's think like an alarm clock you hear the sound but then to listen is to perceive
and take action it requires an action so you know if you hear an alarm clock okay you
you hear it and then when you listen to it you're actually
doing something taking that actions shutting it off or setting it to reset uh think of a train you
hear the sound of the train you know blowing the whistle whatever you hear the train and then what
is the action you need to take you know in in that is you know stopping watching for the the
arms to come down the railroad crossing arms you know and you stop you wait you wouldn't proceed
so um you know it requires for a christian that in fact there's a train coming by right now as
i'm recording this but for a christian that it means that we walk in obedience we hear the voice
of the lord and we obey think of abraham he was called by god to leave his family and to go where
was he going well you know he wasn't real sure but he obeyed and he went that required obedience same
thing with moses he was called by god to go back to egypt to deliver his people so he had to first
hear and then his obedience in listening to the voice of god was to obey him to go
you know speak to pharaoh let my people go think of gideon gideon heard
what god was saying but now how does he do this it seemed quite contrary to what you know he would
think and he he had wrong thinking he was thinking he was less than anybody else but he needed
to hear what god was saying and then obey him now the last thing here
they didn't obey god they walked according to the councils and the dictates of their own evil hearts
you know there's still our hearts are not 100 pure so if we aren't listening to god we will fall
into the trap of our own uh our own thinking which may not be a hundred percent good and then it said
they went backward and not forward and you know because of their arrogance and their complaining
their disobedience that generation never entered this is talking about moses generation they never
entered the promised land so we want to hear what god is saying and listen and how we listen
is by our obedience i know many times the lord would basically tell me just get in your car
and start driving i'll tell you where to go well i had no clue but it was always a
mission that he had set ahead of me that i would accomplish what he was sending me for
so we hear and then we listen and our listening is obeying okay children till next time be blessed