Jim Class - Part 2

Well, turn to your neighbor, somebody on the left and right, and tell them, "Welcome to gym class." Welcome to gym class. And then tell them to drop and give you 10 or something like that. Nobody doing that one. You as I was pray preparing for this, it brought back memories of gym class in high school. Anybody remember gym class in high school? Yeah, I was saying I hated I always forgot my gym clothes. You know, you had to bring the special gym clothes and you got counted off if you didn't bring the right gym clothes. And so I struggled with that one. But anyway, gym class. So for those of you that might have missed last week, we are studying the book of James, digging into James, and that's where the term gym comes from. It's short for James.

but also James has some very challenging things for us. Uh so working out some of these muscles that we need to improve on and uh last week pastor taught us about count it all joy when you have tribulations. Did anybody get to work out that muscle this week? Did anybody have any tribulations this week and you're like I'm counting it joy? Hands up. Any any tribulations? I see a few there. Did anybody have tribulations you just didn't count it joy? Is for everybody. It's been an amazing week. Okay. Well, this week we are skipping down a little bit in James and we're going to be uh looking at James 1 and 19. But before I get into that, I want to tell you a little personal story. So, a lot of people have been going on spring break and maybe you've taken the drive to go somewhere.

Just recently, we got back from Destin getting ready for a wedding that's coming up in a few months. But taking the drive down there, and I don't know about you guys, but when we take driving trips, especially recently now that we don't have a bunch of kids in the back screaming and have to deal with them and it's just the wife and I, we have our positions. I usually drive 90% of the time. Sometimes we've had this happen where right at the very end Chrissy will drive and then she takes credit for the whole trip. If she drives 10 miles, she drove the whole way. But most of the time I'm the one driving and my attitude when driving is I am locked in. It might as well be a NASCAR race. I am, you know, weaving in and out. It drives her crazy. She constantly wants to look for the pocket.

She calls it the pocket. that area where it's cars are way in front and way in back and she just settles in. But me, I'm like, "Would you just move over? Why can't you move over to the right? I want to pass." You know, I I'm looking at uh GPS now and it says I'm going to get there at such and such. Can I beat it? Can I get there a little faster? Am I on pace? All this stuff. So, I'm focused in while Chrissy is passenger princessing it. Now, she's not a sleeper. She doesn't sleep in the car, but she does sing a lot and she does talk a lot. And if you're like me, you know, she'll get into a conversation and I'm thinking about, am I keeping pace? Am I going and and and she's having a conversation and talking about stuff and I know those right moments to look over and say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

Like I'm paying attention or or yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. But then they'll inevitably come that question of like, "So, what do you think about that?" and I have not been paying any attention. Anybody ever Anybody ever have that happen to you? Raise your hand. Have they had that happen to you? Has it happened to you? If it's happened to you this week, raise your hand. Anybody had it happen to you this week? What about today where you've just zoned out on a conversation? Anybody had it happen today? Some some hand. Oh, I see one back there, brother. Um, so it happens, right? And so that's what we're going to be digging in to today is James is going to be challenging us on listening. So I'm not here tonight because I've gotten this figured out.

I'm up here because I was the guy in the driver's seat who wasn't paying attention. You know, James doesn't write this passage to people that have arrived. He's writing it to people that are still trying like us, trying to improve. And so in gym class, we're working out those muscles that maybe have atrophied a little bit. Sometimes we do better. Uh and so tonight, we're still trying. So I want to play. Has anybody ha had the heard the game of put a finger down? You know, you ask questions and it's like put a finger down if you've done this. Put a finger down if you've done that. Put a finger down. We're going to do that. So I need everybody's participation. Okay. I'm going to ask you 10 questions. 10 questions. Right. So, I need you to stick up both hands and I'm going to go through these questions and and you know the whole put a finger down routine.

So, both hands up in the air. Everybody got them? Let me see. Everybody participating here? Okay. Number one, put a finger down if you've ever pretended to listen while waiting your turn to talk. Put a finger down if you've zoned out in a sermon before. Don't worry, we're not talking about this one. Just any sermon. If you've zoned out before, put a finger down if your phone has buzzed in the last 10 minutes and you're still wondering who it is. Put a hand down if you've ever asked somebody to repeat themselves because you weren't listening. Put a finger down if you've ever walked away from a conversation and realized you never asked the other person a single question. Think about the last person who introduced themselves to you at church.

Do you remember their name? Well, that one's bad for me. I I struggle for that. Put a finger down if you've ever said mhm to something you actually didn't ever hear. Put a hand down if you've ever been in the car and realized 10 minutes later that you hadn't heard a word. That's my story. Put a finger down if it God has been trying to tell you something and you've been too loud to hear. And lastly, put a finger down if you're starting to realize that listening, this listening thing is harder than you thought. Has anybody anybody lose all 10 fingers? Somebody's got two left, right? Did anybody realize that some of my instructions didn't actually tell you to put a finger down? And some of them actually told you to put a whole hand down. Did anybody lose a hand or did you just not pay attention to that?

Does anybody ever remember playing Simon says? Right. Why is it so hard? Why is Simon says so hard? Cuz we anticipate. We want to get to the next thing. I remember. Anybody ever play the game in the water, out of the water? Everybody remember that? Maybe that was just a Westside thing where we played in the water, out of the water. But kind of like Simon says, the brain is weird. uh it it is wired to form patterns but not necessarily presence. And once we get into a rhythm, we stop actually hearing. We just kind of nod along. And like the whole put a finger down exercise, we just think we know what's going to be said and instead of actually listening, we miss the whole thing. So James 1 and 19 reads this. If you've got it, let's put it up there.

And tonight, just like in gym class, we're going to have three sets. Anybody know what sets and reps are? Three sets. So, three main things we're going to focus on from James. And I'm going to dig into all of those. But here's our scripture from James 1:19. It says, "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man workketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. So, here's the three reps we're going to preview, and I'll dig into each of these. One, swift to hear. We're going to talk about listening to others. Slow to wrath, and we're going to dig into really listening to ourselves.

And then receive with meekness, the engrafted word, listening to God. Those are going to be kind of our three subjects. Before we dig into that, does anybody when I use the term shama, does anybody know what that is? Shama, what is it? >> Israel is oneord. >> Absolutely. It's referring to Deuteronomy 6 and4. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And the first word that we start out with is here. Now, uh I'm a big fan of the Bible project. Does anyone love the Bible project? Some great videos out there on the Bible project. They have videos that cover every book of the Bible completely for free if you just touch uh just search Bible project and whatever book. But they have this great video on the shama. And so I want to share that with you guys uh tonight to give us a little context about this word shama.

For thousands of years, every morning and evening, Jewish people have prayed these well-known words as a way of expressing their devotion to God. They're called the shama. Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. And as for you, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength. Now, the first word of the Shama is hear or listen, which in Hebrew is pronounced shama. That's where the prayer gets its name. Now, shama is a really common word in the Hebrew Bible, and it's obvious why. Hearing is a very universal activity. It's usually connected with the ear, as in Proverbs chapter 20. Ears that shama and eyes that see, the Lord has made them both. Now, that seems basic enough, but if you look at the other ways that Hebrew authors can use the word shama, they use it to mean more than just let sound waves enter your ear.

In Hebrew, shama can also mean pay attention to or focus on. So when Leah who wasn't loved by her husband Jacob, she has a son and she names him Simon or in Hebrew Shimon because she says the Lord has shamad that I am unloved. So shama means to hear and to pay attention to and even more. It can also mean responding to what you hear. This is why so many of the cries for help in the book of Psalms begin with a call that God listened. Psalm 27:7, shama my voice when I call, oh Lord, be merciful, answer me. So asking God to shama is at the same time asking God to act to do something. It's similar to when God asks people to listen. Like when the people of Israel come to Mount Si, God says, "If you shama me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession."

Now, there's a couple interesting things about this verse in Exodus. In Hebrew, the word shama is repeated twice in this sentence to give it emphasis. If you shama shama, meaning listen closely. But also notice that from God's point of view, listening is basically the same as keeping the covenant. So when God asked the people to shama, what he means is that they listen and obey. And that's the last fascinating thing about shama. In ancient Hebrew, there is no separate word for obey. Meaning to carry out the wishes of someone who knows better than you or is in authority over you. So in the Bible, if you want to say, "I will listen and do what you say," you use the single word shama. In Hebrew, listening and doing are two sides of the same coin.

This is why later in Israel's history, when the people were breaking their covenant promises to God, the Hebrew prophets would say things like, "They have ears, but they're not listening." The Israelites of course could hear just fine, but they weren't actually listening or else they would act differently. And so in the end, listening in the Bible is about giving respect to the one speaking to you and doing what they say. Real listening takes effort and action. And that's the Hebrew word shama. So shama uh that would have been a word that James was very familiar with as he was teaching this lesson. Swift to hear doesn't mean be a good audience member. It doesn't mean just listen. It means hear in a way that changes something that forces us to take action.

So, if you have a a pen and a piece of paper or maybe your book, I' I've got or or maybe your phone and you can take a note. I've got a couple of questions that I'm going to ask and I'm going to pause as we go through these three sets to really dig into some questions and I'm just going to ask you to listen. I'm going to pause and there's going to be silence which can be uh unnerving sometimes, but we're going to we're going to work through it. So, listening to others is where we're going to start. When is the last time that you felt like someone really listened to you? Listened in a way that was more of just hearing the words that you were saying, but they were actively listening. The feeling in one word maybe that you have is loved, valued, safe.

See, people don't need to know that you have the right answer. Uh people need to know that you have the right ears, that you're listening. Proverbs has a couple of verses that give us a clue here in listening to others. Proverbs 18:13 says this, "He thatth a matter before he heareth it is folly and shame unto him." That means when you've answered something before you've really heard it is folly and shame. Who's guilty of that? Answering or thinking you've got the answer before you've really listened or maybe even processed what someone was saying. It it's human nature. We want to think of our response before we fully heard what the person has to say. And maybe even when I when I talk about hearing, just like we would in the shama, it's not just what are the actual words that you're saying.

We know that in communication, 90% of communication is body language, right? Like what are they saying back and forth? That's why I hate to have difficult conversations over text. Don't do it. Don't do it. You need to know what that person is saying. Proverbs 10:19 says this, "In the multitude of words there wantth not sin." Now that's King James language, but if you read it in the NLT, it's like sin is present in the multitude of words. Meaning the more you talk, there's something going wrong. A fast talker or a car salesman, right? That they get that reputation. My wife uh works at Camping World and she tells the salesman all the time, you just need to stop talking. Just let the customer talk, right? And that's hard for them to do. Uh it's hard for all of us to do sometimes.

Proverbs 17 and 28 says this, even a fool when he holdeth his peace is counted wise. So if you're a fool and you just don't say anything, some people will think you're wise. And it's still difficult for us to do. So why is it? Why were we not quick to listen? One, I think we struggle with silence. We just struggle sitting in silence. In fact, I'm going to ask you a question that I'm going to ask you to think about and maybe journal on. And as I was preparing for this, I thought I need a little background music. And I'm like, no, I don't. We just need to enjoy the silence for a minute. It it sometimes silence can be awkward. Silence sometimes feels like we're losing control. It feels like we might hear something that costs us if we hold what we want to say and we just hear that other person.

So often times we fill it. We fill it with the words we want to say, the thoughts we have, the thoughts we need to get out of our brain. And eventually the people in our lives just stop talking to us. They just stop saying things to us because they realize we're not listening. We're not hearing them. I want you to do this for a second, and this gets into my journaling question. I want you to picture one person in your life that's harder for you to listen to than anyone else. Don't say their name. Don't look at them if they're sitting beside you. Just picture in your head that one person that's harder than anyone else to listen to. Just hold their face in your in your mind for a second. You know who I'm talking about. If you see them coming like, "Oh no.

Oh no." Uh maybe turn around and walk the other day other way. I'm going to ask this question for you and I'm going to give you some time just silence for you to think about it. Maybe if you have a pen and paper, write it down. Uh if you have your phone, take a note in there. But really let this sink in and dig into it. Here's rep one, our first rep in gym class today. This is the listening rep. For that person that you pictured, what am I afraid I'll have to admit or change if I actually hear this person? What am I afraid I will have to admit or change if I actually hear this person? Who found that 30 seconds awkward? Were you just waiting for me to say something and feel it? It was only 30 seconds. Felt like eternity up here. Rep two, listening to yourself.

So what James says is be quick to listen. If we go back to our scripture here, it says swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. Slow to speak and slow to wrath. Almost every time I've gotten really angry, it started with a story I had told myself before I finished hearing. Have you ever had that situation where something was said? Maybe a text was sent or you overheard something that someone said and maybe you're driving in the car and before you arrive at it or maybe you've gotten home. Whatever it is, you've built an entire narrative in your head of what happened, who said what, who did what, who thought what, and how you're going to respond. Right? you you've come up with a story or a narrative of what has happened, who is wrong to, what they've said about you, and it's led you to anger, right?

We've told oursel a story. We've spoke a story into our mind. And a lot of times that can lead to embarrassment because we get there and we figure out all of our assumptions were wrong. Ephesians says, Ephesians 4:26 and 27 says this, "Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Anger is really a signal. And when I hear James talking about be slow to speak and slow to get angry, he's not telling us don't get angry. What he's telling us is pay attention to why you're angry. There's this great book called The Voice of the Heart that really tells us that we have to be better listeners to why we're having an emotion than really experiencing the emotion itself. How do you listen to yourself? Why am I angry about this? What is it that is making me angry?

Anger is a signal. Anger is the check engine light on the dashboard of your soul. The problem isn't the light. It isn't the anger. The problem is when you cover it up with electrical tape and keep driving, right? Problem is when you I got into my daughter's car the other day and it looked like a Christmas tree, you know, just turned it on and all the lights were lit up with everything. Do you not pay attention to any of them? I'm bad about that, too. Who's got a TPMS sensor that's on? You know, me. Um, so it teaches us something about what we feel. And I think often we have feelings, we have emotions we're not paying attention to, and we like to numb them with things, things that uh maybe the world would numb them in ways we don't approve of with uh strong things like alcohol or drugs.

But I would say like social media and some of the other things that we do to numb our emotions are because we don't want to listen to what our heart is saying to us. We want to avoid those emotions at all cost and really dig into them. And so it's difficult for us to listen to what our feelings are saying. I'm not saying to respond and I'm not saying that all feelings are valid. I'm just saying you should ask yourself and dig deeper, why am I feeling this? Uh if we go back to the beginning of scripture, uh Genesis 4 6 and 7 says this. And the Lord said unto Cain, "Why art thou wrath? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, thou should not be ex uh shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lith at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and and thou shalt rule over him."

I've I've kind of read this in the past as a rhetorical question, a question that maybe God was asking that needed no answer. Like, Cain, you have no reason to be angry. Why are you angry? You have no reason to be. But as I went back and was preparing for this, maybe God is asking him to dig deeper, not as like you have no reason, but understand why. Why am I angry? If you've ever taken the time to slow down when you're going through something, I think what James is telling us, be slow to speak, slow to anger. He's saying, slow down in this process and dig deeper and listen to yourself. God doesn't punish Cain for anger. He asked him a question. He's trying to teach him to listen to it. Sin lith at the door. crouching. Cain didn't listen. And we know what that led to.

He's killed. He killed his brother. Every time I've done real damage to someone I love, it started with anger that I didn't listen to. I just responded. I reacted, right? I reacted to that anger. And then moments later, I really wanted to take it back because I found out I didn't have all the information. I made assumptions. Assumptions in my own mind and things that I needed to listen to of why am I feeling this way? Why am I so angry about this? And sometimes, more than sometimes, I think often God will help us process those emotions to say, God, why am I angry? Open my eyes to why am I angry about this? or or why am I sad about this or why am I afraid about this? Ask God to open your eyes to those emotions, not just take them away so that we can listen to what's going on inside of us.

Righteousness doesn't come from an explosion. It comes from awareness. Being aware of why we feel that way. Have you ever noticed that your body will tell you the truth before your mouth does? Maybe a tight jaw, a hot chest, climbing shoulders. We even call it a nodded stomach. Proverbs 4:23 says this, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Keep your heart." That that word in the Hebrew keep is natsar. N a ts a r. It's like a guard, a watchman. Not protecting as far as stopping what's there. Not like a a shield so that nothing comes in. Not like a an army to keep you from feeling anything that this world has to offer. But it is a watchman that's paying attention to what's coming in and what's going out. Most of us aren't paying attention.

Maybe our our body is screaming from stress. Our mind is whirling and going over things. Uh we are avoiding conversations we need to have because we're just every moment we have, we're just jumping into social media or some other way to not pay attention to what we're really feeling and we need to listen to ourselves. So, rep two, and I'm going to give you this the moment of silence here again, so just be prepared for it. This is the anger rep. So, we talked about the listening rep. This is the anger rep. What made me angry recently? Think about a recent situation where you got angry. Underneath the anger, what am I actually feeling? Is it hurt? Is it afraid? Maybe disrespected, powerless or shamed? Because anger is a second, usually a second floor feeling.

It happens after something else. But I'm going to give you like 30 to 60 seconds to think about that. What's made you angry recently and dig into what was underneath of it. So, we've talked about listening to others. We've talked about listening to our own emotions and what we're feeling. Our last rep is really listening to God. James 1 and 21 says this, "Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls." James actually uses a Greek word here that's it's the only time that it's used in the entire New Testament. It's impathos. It's used only here. The King James version actually translates the word as engrafted. Grafted in. If you read the King James version, it doesn't do as good of a job of translating it.

But grafting is a process where maybe a farmer cuts a notch into a tree and fuses a branch that's in that limb together. And over time, that branch becomes part of the new tree. It draws life from the root that it didn't grow. It bears fruit. It could have never borne itself because it's grafted in. See, God didn't hand us his word from across the room. We can't download this. We have to graft it in. It has to become grafted in. It's grafted into our hearts, into our spirit. It's not separate from us anymore. It becomes a part of who we are. It becomes a part of knitted in us. In Mark 4, there's a parable of the sewer. You guys are probably very familiar with that. And it talks about the same seed that is scattered on different soil, right?

The the sewer comes by and he sews seed. And every time I've read that story, I've really thought about the different types of soil being different types of people. a people that may be hard-hearted or uh people where the ground is accepting of the soil or where it falls in the rocks and the sun comes and the birds take it away. But what if it's really talking about areas of our life? Because I know there's areas of my life where God's trying to speak into my life and and that soil is just not ready to receive that that seed, that thing that he's speaking or challenging me on. When James says, "Lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness," he's really talking about, "Clear the soil, pull out the thorns, clean out the trash." We've got to lay some things apart, lay them aside, and take them away before we can really hear what God is saying to us.

I know in my prayers before, I've said, "God, I just want you to speak to me. I just want to hear your voice in a situation. Maybe in a trial that I'm going through. Maybe in a an answer to a a stress that I have in my life. God, I just want to hear your voice. But I'm am I really having trouble hearing or am I having trouble laying aside all of the other things that keep me from hearing? Laying aside maybe bitterness, that offense that you have. The Bible's clear about bitterness and what it does for us. But we like to water those things, right? If I'm bitter about a situation, I mle that over in my head a lot. And maybe God's trying to speak to me. It's trying to graft something into me, but that bitterness is in a way. It's a thorn bush where a harvest should be.

Uh maybe there's noise. We like to fill our days with noise. and it's easier and easier than it's ever been before. We can have headphones in all the time listening to music. We've got podcasts. We've got everything. Um, you've got something. If if I ask you guys to turn on a hundred different things right now in this very room. It's not like the old days where there's only three channels and if you don't like what's on just go away and don't watch something. You can find something. And if not, you can doom scroll until you find something to watch. Right. We have phones. We have podcasts. When's the last time you were just quiet and alone to listen to God? When's the last time you turned it off? And in some situations, set it outside of your reach, put it away where you can't go get it because I will react and just reach for it naturally.

Maybe it's hustle. Maybe it's not distraction or bitterness, but sometimes we can be so busy in our lives or going through seasons in our lives. So busy earning your worth, taking care of your family, whatever it might be, that you haven't sat still long enough to receive what God has been speaking into your life. There's a couple two men in the Bible uh where there's stories I think that are great for listening for us to dig into. The first one's in 1 Samuel. You guys are are very familiar with this where Samuel's in the temple and you have the older prophet Eli and Samuel's asleep and he hears this voice calling after him and he runs into Eli to see if it's Eli talking to him and and Eli's like I I didn't call you go back to sleep and uh Samuel goes back to sleep and he hears the voice again.

This happens four time until we get to 1st Samuel 3 and9 where Eli gives him this instruction. And he says, "When that voice calls again, it says speak, Lord, for your servant heareth." You see, what was happening is Samuel didn't recognize the voice of God. He didn't recognize God speaking in his life. God had spoke to him three times already, but Samuel didn't know who it was. I think sometimes I I'm guilty of this, too, and pastors use the phrase Maybe it was last night's pizza, right? And maybe it's just my own mind. But how do we get what would it be like to get so radically in tune with the voice of God that we absolutely know it wasn't our own thinking or it wasn't last night's pizza because I know what God's voice sounds like in my life.

I know his voice. If you've ever gone through any of those voice tests, like you know what someone's voice sounds like that you're very familiar with, you can tell I can tell just from a cough, right? From a cough or or or just them clearing their throat, you know what their voice sounds like because you've heard from them so much. What would it take? What would it take for us to know God's voice so much in our own life? The second one, the second man I want to explore is in first kings 19 and this was Elijah. Very famous story where he had this amazing moment where he's got all the prophets of Baal on one side and and there's him and he's built an altar, right? And uh he comes and he says, "It's not good enough just to build an altar, make a sacrifice, pour water on top of this thing."

Water in the middle of a famine, right? water when there was barely any water. And they pour tons of water on top of the sacrifice. And then he calls down fire from heaven and God consumes everything. The stones, it's all wiped away. And then he's running for his life. He's out in the wilderness and he's hiding in his cave because he's afraid of this princess that says she's going to kill him or queen. And it says the Lord told him that he was going to come to him and there was a strong wind that passed, but God wasn't in the wind. There was an earthquake. The earth shook, but God wasn't in the earthquake. And there was a fire, but God wasn't in the fire. Earth, wind, and fire, but God wasn't in any of it. First Kings 19:11-12 it says this.

The Lord was not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, and after the fire, a still small voice. We keep waiting for God in the wind to speak to us in some pronounced way. We keep waiting for God in the earthquake. We keep waiting for him in the fire and the loud. And God keeps whispering and we keep missing because we're not listening. Because listening requires something. If if I'm in that conversation with my wife or with somebody and I really want to listen to them, there's some action that is taken on my part to set some things aside, to turn some things off outside and inside my mind so I can focus on what they're saying to me. And the same is true with God. If God is speaking in your life, and he's probably speaking right now, it requires some intentionality on your part to turn some things off, to set some things aside, maybe even to do some fasting in your life to turn those things off so you can hear his voice because he is speaking.

It's just in a still small voice. He's not going to he's not going to speak over all the noise that you have in your life to get your attention. What he may do is stop all the noise you have in your life so you can hear his still small voice. But it requires you setting a aside some time to really listen. Psalms 46 and10 says it this way. It says, "Be still and know that I am God. Be still." We struggle with that one, don't we? I'm a three. I'm achiever. I I get up and go. I like getting th things done early in the morning. And pastors already said this past week on the Sabbath, we struggle with the Sabbath. We struggle with just being still and letting God exist in our lives and show out who he is. But we need to be still and know that he is God.

The first part of that requires intentionality on our part to be still. It seems like it's easy. It seems like if I'm talking about gym class and it's just sit down, right, and be still and focus in. But man, is it hard? Is it really hard? I made a joke this past week. Uh my dad always said this. Um there was a a guy at work and he has a small one that was just learning to walk and talk. And I've got a grandkids, not close to that yet, but will be there soon. And he's like, "You spend the first two years teaching them to walk and talk and the next 18 telling them to shut up and sit down." Right? And I think God's the same way for us. He's just like, "Be still. Just stop it, if you will. You will not know him if you will not be still." There's a refrain in Revelation.

Revelation says this. Revelation 2 and 7. It says, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit says unto the churches." It's repeated several times in Revelations. It's not has an ear, but he that hath an ear, trained ears, ears that have done the reps of listening for God's voice, ears that have done the reps of setting things aside and focusing in on God. ears that have trained themselves. I I think it takes time. I I want to be honest with you, wherever you may be on on the spectrum of this journey of listening to God, because you're never going to completely figure it out. You're going to have seasons in your life where it's easier and seasons in life where life is harder. Um, but what I would say is don't expect you're going to leave this place tonight and think that you're going to fast for 40 days and 40 nights and you're going to set everything aside that you've set aside and you're going to hear God's voice like that.

You need to start small, just like you would if you're going to the gym and building up reps. Set aside 10 minutes. set aside everything for 10 minutes and just focus in. And sometimes I think even in prayer, we're feeling words where we need to stop speaking and just ask God the same words that Samuel said. I'm here your servant. Speak, Lord. Just listen to what his voice is saying to us. Last rep is this, the heart rep, and then I'll wrap us up. I'm going to give you a couple seconds again, but I really want you to think about this. What has God been trying to tell me, maybe even for a long time that I've been too loud, too busy, or too angry to hear? What would it look like to receive that with meekness this week? What do I need to set aside to let go of to hear what God is really saying to me this week?

Think about that. Who knew it could get so quiet in here? Wrapping up, going back to James 1:21, the very end of that, it says, "The engrafted word which is able to save your souls." In the Greek, the word that James used there is soo talking about save. But that's not a save that is just go to heaven. Like save your souls in an eternal perspective. It means to rescue, to heal, to make home, to deliver, to bring home. That engrafted word that we talk about, it has the power to rescue your marriage. That engrafted word that is in you that you need to listen to. It has the power to heal your mind. You may be struggling with things in your mind. It has the power to heal your mind. That engrafted word has the power to deliver your children. It has the power to bring you home to yourself, to really digging into who you are.

Maybe you've lost your way, but only if you'll hear, only if you will take the time to listen. It seems like a small concept even what we heard in that video of Shama hero O Israel but there is a lot more to it because hearing something requires change. It requires you to do something about it. So let's wrap it all up. James reminds us to be swift to hear. Love shows up in ears before it shows up in our mouth. just close it this week and listen to somebody. It makes a world of difference if you'll just turn everything off and pay attention. It drives me crazy even at restaurants these days where you're at a table and everyone is on their phones. They're sitting in front of each other and they're not listening to one another or paying attention to one another.

Just show up and pay attention. Slow to wrath. Pay attention to the feelings that you're having this week and ask God just as God asked Cain, "Why are you angry? God, why am I angry? God, why am I feeling this way? Help me dig deeper into what's going on in my life?" And then receive that meekness, that word that's engrafted. Listen to God's voice and ask him just as God did, I'm here, Lord, your servant. I'm listening. Maybe you haven't listened to the person you love in years. That's your spouse. Uh, this week can be different. Maybe you've been carrying anger deep inside of you that you've never brought to light or never taken the time to really listen to yourself and what's causing that. I recommend journaling. Just write it down. Get it out.

Maybe God has been whispering something and you've been ignoring it for far too long. And this can be the week where that is different because James challenges us to just listen. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry, and move a lot of those things out of our life so God can make some huge changes. That's it. That's the end of our workout this week. Three reps. I know at the end of the workout, I'm always happy at that last rep. I'm like, that is it. Let's stand and go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, I thank you for your blessings and your mercy and your love, dear God. And I thank you for reminding us this week uh to slow down and listen, to hear your voice, God. You're speaking to each and every one of us. uh help us to set aside those things that beset us and to remember what James has said to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

Thank you for your word tonight. Help it sink deep into our hearts and let us sha take action from the word that we've heard tonight. In Jesus name we pray.