Give Ear to His Word!

There is nothing more important than the Word, and yet it is probably the most misunderstood among Christians. To most people the Word is information found in the Bible. The truth is: the Word is Spirit, the Word is Life, and the Word is the Lord. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made by Him… (John 1:1, 3a).

We need to be able to discern the Word, to hear it, and to assimilate it. Every Christian should be able to hear the Word of the Lord and to know how to assimilate in his or her spirit. We are going to start with a verse from the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 28:23 Give ye ear, and hear My voice; hearken, and hear My speech.

The way this verse is written puts a great amount of responsibility upon us. You give ear! You hear My voice! You hearken! You hear My speech! We cannot assume we are receiving the Word when we read the Bible or hear a sermon. That gives us good reason to believe that hearing the Word of the Lord is tremendously important. It also gives us reason to feel that many of us are not hearing the Word as well as we should.

Do you know how to give ear unto the Lord? It is not real easy for a Christian to learn how to hear the Lord. If the Lord spoke out loud as we do and you only had to be able to hear sound, it would be an easy thing to hear the Word, but He doesn’t speak to our natural hearing, and it is not with the physical ear that we need to hear. He is Spirit and He speaks to spirit. So it is with your spirit that you must learn to hear the Word.

When God spoke from Sinai He said, If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. Exodus 19:5. He did not say, “If you will obey what I say” but “obey My voice.” His voice is the emanations of His Spirit. That is why Jesus said, The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63). Even if you heard the Lord speak actual words, as the crowd often did in the days of Jesus the Nazarene, you haven’t really heard Him until you have received the emanations of His presence with your spirit. If you have really heard His voice, then something of His presence and Spirit has been transferred to your spirit and change comes to your life. Is that scriptural? Of course it is! But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (II Corinthians 3:18).

The ability to hear the Word of the Lord and to assimilate in your spirit is most important and many Christians cannot. Do you feel you hear the Word because you read the Bible or hear it spoken from the pulpit? The Jews heard what Jesus said but they did not understand, and most of the time they didn’t even know they did not understand it. Many Christians today are like that; they don’t know they are not hearing the Word of the Lord. Jesus said to the Jews, Why do you not understand My speech? Even because you cannot hear My Word. John 8:43. Then He went on to explain it. It was because they lived in two different worlds. He said to them, You are from beneath; I am from above: you are of this world; I am not of this world. John 8:23. The Word of the Lord is from another world; it is from God’s world of Spirit. Give ear to His Word!

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