Luke 8:18 Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.
Messages are coming to us all the time. They are either coming to us, going past us, sinking in, or bouncing back.
There are even idioms and phrases that indicate that we understand that this is happening.
- “He just doesn’t get it.”
- “Figure it out.”
- “Let it sink in. Let the truth sink in.”
- “Duh.”
- “Bingo.”
- “Let the elevator go to the top.”
- “Do I need to repeat that?”
- “What about ‘no’ don’t you understand?”
- “Did you hear me?”
To make progress, we need to understand the messages being sent to us by God and act on them if we hope for results. We can’t let messages “go in one ear and out the other.”
The Bible is full of messages and wisdom from God and we can open the Bible and read it at will. But there are also messags of awareness, conviction, conscience, “gut-level” feelings, that are there to warn us. A lack of peace is a warning.
If you read through the Old Testament, you will find the story of Israel, which the Apostle Paul in the New Testament says is there as a repository of lessons for us. Some things don’t change. Some lessons are true generation to generation. Gravity is operating today, it operated yesterday, 20 years ago, and 200 years ago. We either learn to cooperate with the law of gravity or resist, fight, and experience the consequences of fighting the law.
In the Old Testament, when the nation left off following God, they experienced problems. The problems were designed to get them to a point of realization that the problems existed because they as a nation had ceased to put God first. Sometimes they figured it out. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes only some people figured it out and the rest didn’t.
It is the same today. For example, if a person says “they don’t have time” to pray or go to church, the day may come when that same person is flat on his back, looking up, with plenty of time to pray. God doesn’t bring evil, but it is entirely possible for a person through disobedience to walk out of the umbrella of protection and experience consequences.
Think of a life of obedience as a person holding a good and solid umbrella over his head. Obedience keeps the rain off. The rain is falling, but the person is protected by the umbrella. Now consider every act of disobedience as putting a hole in the fabric of the umbrella. Drops of rain begin to get through. The protection is less and less as the holes increase. The consequence of the holes increases.
Mark 4:23 (KJV) If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
24 And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given.
25 For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.
