Michael Harrison's e-devotion

  If we loose hearing, it is a big deal.  There are many things that help us hear and connect to what is around us.  You also have the other senses like touch, smell and sight.   Can you hear and who are you listening to?   If you can’t hear, you can’t listen.  If you aren’t listening but can hear, you have chosen not to hear.  Why block out things and people that make our lives better?   Think about who you are listening to and what you are listening to.  Those things are influencing us, shaping our character, changing our minds, even tearing apart or building us up.   Deuteronomy 6:4  NLT   Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone   Exodus 19:9  NLT   Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will come to you in a thick cloud, Moses, so the people themselves can hear me when I speak with you. Then they will always trust you.” Moses told the Lord what the people had said.   Hebrews 4:7  NLT   S...

  Yesterday I shared with you from Sunday’s sermon and Hebrews 12.  What an incredible passage that I quote often.  But I want to move on in the same chapter with a few points that I need to hear once again. This is what I referenced on Monday: Hebrews 12:1-3  NLT   Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. 3 Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up. This admonition is something that will radically change the way we live and the way we look at life.  We are n...

  Don’t you love it when God speaks to you?  Often in Scripture.  Some times in song.  Could be through other people, conversations and situations.  But God gets our attentions and shares something we need to hear. For me there are many different ways, but the Bible is the one that most often shows off what God is says and how He is leading.  He also uses songs, and there was a song yesterday that caught my attention and hit my heart. The song this time is Goodbye Yesterday by Elevation.  Here are some of the lyrics: Goodbye, yesterday I'm livin' in the light of a new day I won't waste another minute in my old ways Praise the Lord, I've been born again Goodbye, yesterday I'm livin' in the light of a new day I won't waste another minute in my old ways Praise the Lord, I've been born again Oh, I've been born again Again and again and again and again You rescued me out of the mess I was in You traded my sorrow for something to sing Now, I'm dancin...

  Romans 11:33-36  NLT Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! 34 For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?  Who knows enough to give him advice?  35 And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? 36 For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.   This week I am spending time at a conference.  One of the things that this requires is listening.  But we have to listen every day. My prayer is we will listen to what God is saying all the time.  Listening is an art and very important.  Listen is vital to following God. There is very little that we have to explain apart from Scripture. God shares with us that He is in charge, He is able and He has all of life in His hands.   Years ago I heard Pastor John MacArthur say something li...

  There is a problem when we stop listening.  Some people can’t hear as they may have a health problem keeping them from being able to hear everything or maybe just certain sounds.   My sweet wife tells me that I have “selective hearing” where I hear only what I want to hear.  That is also a problem.  I should to be listening all the time, but we often teach ourselves who and what to listen to.   Think about listening to God.  If we are honest, many of us have at some point stopped listening to God.  He speaks all the time and for our good.  Yet in the middle of sin or stress and struggle we have stopped listening.    Listen up.  God is always speaking.  Hearing what God says will change us and our situations.  Listen in as we can trust what God says.  His plan for us is perfect.   Acts 3:22  NLT Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your own people.  Lis...

  Mark 8:31-32  NLT   Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. 32 As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. Two weeks from today is what we call “Good Friday”.  What is good about it? It is the day that we remember how Jesus was taken to and died on the cross.  It was meant for the worst of criminals and not a perfect Savior, yet God let Jesus be placed there. Jesus willing went to the cross, laid down His life and had your wrongs and mine put on Him.  All this for a purpose. But that is two weeks from now.  Take a minute today and think the thoughts that maybe the disciples thought.  Jesus said He would have to die.  He would not be with them much longer.  ...

  Today’s e-devotion is a simple thought from one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen and is titled “A Life of Listening”.  I pray this encourages us to stop and listen even more. Galatians 5:25  “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit."  I began to understand that when we listen to the Spirit, we hear a deeper sound, a different beat.  The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, non-hearing life to a life of listening.  From a life in which we experience ourselves as separated, isolated, and lonely to a life in which we hear the guiding and healing voice of God, who is with us and will never leave us alone.

  Listen and follow.  That is our call.  God shares and speaks. John 10:2-4  NLT   The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. We continued our series at The Community Fellowship yesterday “Get to Know the Shepherd”, and once again we learn that our good Shepherd, Jesus, is always leading. It is the people who know His voice that follow and find what we need and who we are in our choosing to follow.  Yet the two things we have to do, how we respond is to listen and do something.  When we don’t respond or don’t even don’t listen, that is when we will always miss the best that God has for us. The sheep recognize His voice and know Him.  They won’t follow the fake shepherds or the robbers.  This good shepherd goes ahead of them and lea...