On our date night recently, my wife and I decided to watch a movie. In this movie the main character was framed for bombing a city and while he was being escorted to the back of a SWAT van, he said this one line that hit me deeply… “That’s the problem nowadays, nobody listens.”

That one-line comment was so profound. I instantly thought of God. The movie was still playing but, in my heart, I was asking, “Lord, am I listening to you?” “Lord, are we, the Newman Baptist Church, listening to you?”  I don’t know everything, but this I know… bad things happen when we don’t listen to God.

I never want to be in a place where I am the captain of my own ship. Do you? Can you see further than God? Can you plan a course for A BETTER LIFE for yourself than God? Can you provide for yourself better than God? 

I say this respectfully and carefully: When you put your life in your own hands and become captain of your ship, you are worshiping idols! Everyone worships something. If you don’t believe me, answer this: Where does most of your money, time, and energy go? If your life’s focus is not on God, you are worshiping idols!

Some may say, ‘I just don’t have enough time or money.’ ‘I am too old, or too young, or I have children.’ My personal favourite is ‘I don’t know enough.’ Friends, those excuses won’t fly when you stand before the King.

Last week at Men’s Breakfast, we had such a beautiful ‘iron sharpening iron’ time. We came as we were, but left challenged and changed. We were open about idols that we saw in our lives, and we cast them down by renouncing them. We asked God for forgiveness, to keep each other accountable, and to not give up!

This is what a church should be about: bearing one another’s burdens, encouraging each other, loving one another, breaking bread, praying, enduring suffering, putting other’s needs before our own, and caring for widows and orphans.

Church is not a place that looks after our kids for a few hours. It’s not about ‘feed me’… sing a few songs… a 40-minute sermon, then I’m out the door!

How do you start your day?Do you start your day with an alarm? Do you have a shower, then breakfast? Some listen to music… view some TV… check the stock market, and prune the long list of emails. So many things fight for our attention, but my question is: “Who are you listening to?”

The Bible is a true and honest record of people who’ve made mistakes. We can learn from the mistakes made by those who walked with God and those who refused to walk with Him.  Let’s take a moment to learn from the BIGGEST mistake Adam made. What did he do? In the Book of Genesis, God said to Adam, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it” (3:17).

I need to pause here for a moment. Husbands, this doesn’t mean you are not to listen to your wives. This means that when husbands listen to whatever their wives desire, and which is contrary to what God commands, bad things will happen!

Yes, the Scriptures say we are to love our wives and live in an understanding way with them; but when it comes to what God commands, you must act responsibly by saying, “Honey, I love you, but no!”

When you say “no”, not only are you honouring God, but you are teaching and being an example of Jesus to your wife. I love and respect my wife; I trust her with my life. She knows all my bank details, passwords… everything! I would be weakened without her. I love her more than my life.

Daily, I do my best to live in an understanding way with my wife and I know she will never do anything to bring harm to me, not intentionally… but when I hear God calling us to do something, be somewhere, sacrifice something, I will not compromise what God commands of me. My wife willingly testifies that looking back at those times, she was glad that I didn’t listen to her. Instead, I followed what God wanted for us.

Who you listen to is your choice. The Book of First Samuel records a choice the Nation of Israel made. The writer recorded,
“As Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons to be judges over Israel. Joel and Abijah, his oldest sons, held court in Beersheba. But they were not like their father, for they were greedy for money. They accepted bribes and perverted justice.
Finally, all the elders of Israel met at Ramah to discuss the matter with Samuel. “Look,” they told him, “You are now old, and your sons are not like you. Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.” Samuel was displeased with their request and went to the Lord for guidance. “Do everything they say to you,” the Lord replied, “for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt, they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment. Do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them” (1 Sam. 8:1-9).

Reading Gods response to Samuel saddens me… it breaks my heart. Even when God was rejected, unwanted, and abandoned He said to Samuel to “Do everything they say to you.”

I would have warned the elders of Israel that bad things would happen if a human king reigned over them.  The Israelites didn’t want to listen to God. They wanted to be like other nations… listening to a faulty, human figure. Their gaze was at what their pagan neighbours had… they wanted to be like them! And so, the Israelites continually abandoned the one and only true God to follow a multitude of false gods.

Friends, are you listening? Who are you listening to? God forces no person to listen to Him. The danger is to go your own way, not His. Please be careful if you refuse to listen to God. He will let you go your own way… even if you are travelling the wide pathway to hell!

How do you start your day? Do you allow the business of life to fog your mind in the morning, or do you focus your attention on God? The Hebrew word Shema (shay’-mah) means to ‘hear’ or to ‘listen.’ As a Jew, Jesus would have prayed the Shema every morning as a way of committing Himself to loving God and to listening to Him that day. I wonder what attitude we would have if the first thing we did when we woke up each morning was to commit ourselves to loving God, and to listening to His word.

The Book of Deuteronomy records the Shema. Take special note of the first three words …

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (6:4-9).

Who have you chosen to listen to? If it’s the wrong source, even if you enjoy the journey, you will certainly regret the destination!

Elijah Viliafi
August, 2023