As we come together this morning for the sharing time, I had a question: Do we have a hearing heart?
Our theme verse for this time is a very familiar verse from Revelation 2:7:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are ever grateful for the bountiful provision You have made for us. Lord, You have made every provision for life and godliness, for sharing, for hearing, in Christ Jesus.
And truly, by faith, we set our hearts apart unto You during this time, that, Lord, we would really be able to be in tune with Your word. You would take these simple words out of a book, off a piece of paper, off a computer screen, and cause them to be very words of life—words that could strengthen us, equip us, and prepare us for these days that we are living in, Lord.
Lord, we confess we cannot prepare ourselves. But we are thankful You have made provision through the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus to prepare us. So we are looking for You to do that preparatory work within each one of our hearts and lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we are preparing for CFC next week, the question that came to my heart was, Do we have a hearing heart? Do we see the absolute necessity of that?
As we look at this verse, it is one with which we are somewhat familiar. We hear it quite often, but it is going to be our focus for today, because the Lord is crying out to us. The conference theme is “God’s Cry for This Hour: Recovery and Possessing.”
This phrase in Revelation 2:7 is addressed to the church in Ephesus, but we know it is repeated for each of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. The Lord takes the effort to repeat it seven times. When the Lord repeats something twice, that is important. If He says it three times, that is putting it up another notch. He says it seven times because He knows how hard of hearing we are concerning what He is really trying to say.
It also shows His great love and patience with us. He understands us and how He has to repeat things. Even though we have heard this numerous times, we are praying that in a fresh way the Lord can speak to our hearts about this, because it is so vital in these days.
Lance had a book, Preparation for the Coming of the Lord, and there is a quote from that book:
The most important thing at the end of time is to hear what the Holy Spirit says to the church.
Why is that? He continues:
Only the Holy Spirit can give us an ear to hear. Only the Holy Spirit can pierce our ear and enable us to hear. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the ability and power to obey, whatsoever the cost.
Only the Holy Spirit can do this great work. That is what we are looking for in this day and time as we prepare our hearts.
Now, what I am sharing this morning is focused upon CFC and preparing for that. But I want to be clear: this does not diminish or take away at all from the importance of having a hearing heart every day of our lives. The event for which we are preparing is CFC, but it is just a living example of how we need to have prepared hearts as we go through life.
Particularly with all the voices and everything surrounding us, and the many things we hear, it is an absolute necessity in this day for us to have a hearing heart—not just when we are with the people of God, but within our homes, within our jobs, and whatever the circumstances of life are. We need to be in that place of communion, that place of fellowship with Him.
As we have said, the theme for the conference this year is “God’s Cry for This Hour: Recovery and Possessing.” I love that word crying, because this is the Creator, the King of kings, the Almighty One. We have been trying to remember His majesty and how majestic He is this morning.
Yet He, in His great love and mercy, is crying out to us. He is not just calling. He is not merely sending a message. He is crying. It is a deep, grieving, desperate cry of love for His people to return to Him, return to His purpose, and return for His consummation.
There is a cry going out. But sadly, we know that throughout church history and throughout the ages, we as the people of God have not responded to His word in its fullness. Yet He continues to cry. In His compassion, He cries out to us over and over again.
Praise God for His loving-kindness, compassion, and patience with us. We see Him throughout Scripture, and it was actually kind of hard to narrow down just a couple examples of His cries.
At the end of the historical part of the Old Testament, the Lord speaks of how much He had cried out to the people of Israel. Some were already in captivity. The northern kingdom had been taken years before, and even some in the southern kingdom were already captive. Yet before that final captivity, He was still crying out for them to wake up.
In 2 Chronicles 36:15, it says:
And the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place.
Again and again, He cried out. Notice that when God cries out, He is not just crying out for His people; He is crying out for His dwelling place, His house—that precious place where He can put His name. Our brother mentioned at the table how He is dwelling among us. He is crying out for that.
But what was the response?
But they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy.
Finally, there was no remedy but to take them into captivity. But let us be clear: why were they taken into captivity? They were taken into captivity because He loved them. He could have just destroyed them and walked away. But in His great love, to recover His testimony upon this earth, He took a people into captivity.
His cry continued to go out to them even in captivity. What compassion He had for the people of God, and for His house, for His testimony to be a living testimony upon this earth throughout history. We are thankful that there were ebbs and tides. At times, there would be a wonderful move of God; other times, it would fade away.
We also see in the prophet Hosea that our Lord cries out among His people. You can sense the agony in His heart:
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboim?
My heart is turned over within Me,
All My compassions are kindled.
This is the God of gods, the Creator of all things. His heart is turned over within Him.
A little trivia point: Admah and Zeboim were allies of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities of the plain that were destroyed at the same time. I had a thought about that, but I had to look it up and verify it. Remember that sometime; it might come in handy.
Another prophet through whom God cries out is Joel. In Joel 2, we again see our Lord’s heart:
Yet even now, declares the Lord,
Return to Me with all your heart.
You may be in a horrible condition, yet even now, return to Him with all your heart. That is what He is after. We will see this over and over again: He is after our heart. He is not looking for our outward actions. He is looking for an inner transaction within our spirit and within our hearts, that He is King of kings there.
Return with all your heart, and out of that heart there would be fasting, weeping, mourning, and a rending of heart—not your garments. Do not just tear your clothes and act as though you are mourning. No, He is looking for a heart transaction with God.
Return to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness,
And relenting of evil.
In the midst of the poorest conditions, this is God’s cry. It is just as relevant a cry today as it was during the time of Joel. All these cries are similar; they are an eternal cry. He expresses it in many ways, but He is crying out to us in these last days to return to Him and to hear Him.
We are thankful that there was a remnant who responded, who returned to Israel—to Jerusalem—to build the house of God. In Ezra and Nehemiah, we see this.
Why did they return to Jerusalem? It was a city of ruins. Why did they leave Babylon? They actually had it pretty comfortable there. Things were okay. Who were they doing this for? Who were they forsaking everything and returning to Jerusalem for?
They returned for His sake, for His name’s sake, and for His house. It was not to set up their own little kingdom. They did not go back and say, “Wow, I can set up my empire. I can have my own pleasures there.” There was nothing there. There was nothing that would entice the natural man to return to Jerusalem.
There was something within their hearts. Ezra tells us how the Holy Spirit stirred their spirits and stirred their hearts. They said, “Yes, for God—this is where God put His name. I am willing to put behind everything that I have, maybe the great business I built up in Babylon, and return to be about one thing: to build the house of God.”
These were ones who were captured. Their hearts were in tune and in line with what was upon God’s heart. He is looking for that in this hour also—not for their sake, but for His name’s sake and for His house.
Praise God, they responded. They came, and they were really standing in the gap. One characteristic of the remnant was that they were not in it just for themselves. They were standing in the gap for all God’s people.
They desired, “Lord, as we come back, as the house of God is rebuilt, as the wall is rebuilt, and as the testimony is established, others can come back and be with us.” They were always standing in the gap so that others would not remain ruined in captivity, but that a way would be provided for all to return.
It was never about them. It was always about God’s heart for all His people.
They had a good start. They returned and started building. It was wonderful. But suddenly, circumstances, opposition, and various things began disheartening and distracting them, and they stopped building.
Sadly, when they stopped, they were drifting away from Him. But God did not give up on them. In His great love and mercy, He raised up Haggai and said, “Wake up. Consider your ways,” which really means, “Consider your heart. Where is your heart?”
The same thing came through Zechariah: “Return to Me. Be about what I have called you to be.” Praise God, they responded to Haggai and Zechariah. They completed the house and began building the wall.
But much later, they again began falling back. Yet God, in His great mercy, raised up Malachi. Historically, that was the last cry in the Old Testament.
We say all of that to say that today, as we look at Revelation 2 and 3, God has that same cry for us in the hour in which we are living. We have lost count of the number of times we have heard this. We become so familiar with some of these things.
When people say that we are living in the age of the Laodicean church, it does not shock us. We say, “Oh yeah, this is the Laodicean church. We understand what that means.” But it is not a wake-up call. We have become dull. We have become familiar with things, and God is trying to wake our hearts up.
Let us return to this opening verse:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
This cry goes out to all seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3: repent, return to Me, hear Me, follow Me. This wonderful cry goes out to all believers. It does not go out only to a select few. It goes out to everyone.
But the response is individual. He—that individual who has an ear to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying. That same cry is coming to each one of us today.
Someone else cannot hear for you. Someone else cannot reply for you. Each one of us individually has a calling. We cannot rely upon others to hear for us.
We are thankful for one another, for the preciousness of fellowship, for the strengthening and encouragement we receive from one another. But the fellowship, encouragement, and direction we may receive do not in any way alleviate our personal responsibility to hear from Him individually.
As soon as we start relying on someone else to hear for us, we are falling away. He has a direct line to each one of us, that we could have ears to hear what He is saying to us. Praise God.
What is He really saying? Obviously, there is something more here than merely physical hearing. We have physical ears, but there is something more. What is a hearing heart? What is this hearing of which He speaks?
I was reading Proverbs one day and was caught by a verse. In Proverbs 25:12, the New American Standard says:
Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold
Is a wise reprover to a listening ear.
Other translations say:
Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold
Is a wise reprover to an obedient ear.
Is it a listening ear or an obedient ear? The meaning can sound so different. So I looked it up in the Hebrew, and it is the word Shema.
Shema has a dual, multifaceted meaning. It means a hearing heart—a heart to hear. It is a heart that both understands and obeys. It is not merely that we hear something. It is understanding it and obeying it. That is the fullness of this word, Shema.
An example of the understanding aspect is Solomon. When he became king, what was his prayer? He realized that he felt like a little child. He did not know how to go out or come in among God’s people. He realized that the work before him—building the temple of God—was a great work.
So he prayed to the Lord:
Give Your servant an understanding heart.
That is Shema. “Give Your servant a Shema heart, an understanding heart.”
When we talk about understanding God, we can think that we must understand every aspect of what will happen and have a full revelation of everything that is going on. No. He wants us to understand that His heart is for us.
When I was at the university, I first wanted to be a dentist, but then I realized I did not know anything about science. I could not handle that. So I went into accounting and wanted to be a CPA. That was my goal.
God was in that, and I am thankful. But when I wanted to be a CPA, I did not have a full understanding of all that was involved. I knew what the letters meant, but I did not really know everything it involved. As I went along and followed that path, I gained more and more understanding.
I think most people experience that in their careers. We have teachers here. When they first said, “I am going to be a teacher,” perhaps they did not fully understand all the pros and cons, the challenges, and the blessings of it. But they came to understand.
When we speak of understanding God’s heart, we are not talking about everyone having some great revelation. We are talking about understanding that God has an end in view. He has a purpose. We know that His purpose is for us to be the bride of Christ.
There is a process through which we go. We do not fully understand all the details, but we know that in the end He wants this. Like Abraham, by faith we say, “Lord, I do not understand all this, but I want to walk. I want to understand more of Your heart, and I am going to obey You because I see the preciousness of this goal, this consummation that You have set before us.”
That is what we mean by an understanding heart: understanding that He has an end, a goal, and a purpose in view for us to walk into and enter. As we walk into it and enter it, we see more and more of what His heart is for us and the blessing of that.
The obedience side of Shema is seen in Abraham. We know how willing Abraham was to offer up Isaac. He took him to that mountain. He had the knife raised. He was ready to slay his son because he knew God could raise him from the dead. What faith he had.
He did not know the end of the story, but he had faith that God could raise Isaac from the dead. In the middle of that, God said, “Stop.” God provided the lamb, and the sacrifice was offered.
Afterward, as God encouraged and commended Abraham, one of the things He said in Genesis 22:18 was:
In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.
That is because you have Shema’d My voice. So we see that a hearing heart is a heart that understands God and obeys Him. There is such a love for Him. You understand what He is saying, and you obey Him.
Are we really praying, “I want to hear the Lord”? Or are we praying, “Lord, I want to Shema You. I want to hear, understand, and obey You”? That is a hearing heart. I want a hearing heart. How necessary it is in this hour that we have that.
As you look back through the Scriptures, there is an essential characteristic within those who served the Lord and were fully given to Him. I want to use bondservants and priests as two broad examples.
Bondservants point to what we might call practical service—spiritually practical service. Priests point more to holy service unto Him, doing what is due to Him.
What is a bondservant? First, we are all bondservants. Revelation 1:1 speaks of “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants.” He sent and communicated it through His angel to His bondservant John, who wrote it down, and now we receive it. The Holy Spirit can make it alive to us.
But what is a bondservant? In the Old Testament, if someone was a slave and had fulfilled the number of years he was obligated to serve his master, the master set him free. He did not merely set him free; he provided for him, blessed him, and sent him off.
The master gave him clothes, food, perhaps a new cell phone and some internet service—he provided everything for him and sent him on his way.
But there were some who said, “I know I am free, but I love my master so much that I want to stay here.” Voluntarily, under no obligation, they wanted to remain and serve the master and his house.
As soon as one made that commitment, what was the first thing they did? They took him to the doorpost of the house and pierced his ear. Why pierce the ear? Because the most vital organ within a servant is the ear—to hear the master.
It is not only hearing him, as we have been saying, but understanding the master. Even as you work with a boss, you begin to gain understanding. He may ask a question, but what he is really asking is for you to do something else. You learn what he is after.
In marriage, believe it or not, some guys actually learn what their wives really want. It is not always merely the words they say; they communicate through the heart. That is what the Lord is doing with these bondservants.
We often think a servant must first work with hands and feet and do all that stuff. But no, it begins with having that hearing ear.
That is what has happened to us. The Lord set us free. We remembered that at the table this morning. We were in bondage. We were in poverty. He set us free, blessed us, and made us rich.
Under no obligation, He saved us and said, “You are free now. You are liberated. You have My life. You can really do whatever you want.” But the more we see of His love, the more we come and say, “Lord, I do not want to live for myself. I want to live for You.”
That is a bondservant’s heart: living for Him. It starts with that ear. It starts with the ear.
The priest is the same. When they were anointing men for the priesthood in Exodus 29, the Lord said:
You shall slaughter the ram, and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the lobes of his sons’ right ears; then put it on the thumb of their right hand and on the big toe of their right foot.
Then they sprinkled the rest of the blood around the altar. There is the anointing for service. We have all been made priests unto Him.
But if we are honest, sometimes we use our hands and our feet first before really hearing. We see a service and say, “Oh, I need to do this. I need to do that.” But do we have that ear to hear? What is our great High Priest saying? How is He leading us? What is our Master saying to us?
Service is not meeting an obligation. Service is not fulfilling a task. Service is responding to the heart of the One who calls us.
As we respond to His heart, the task is met and the service is done. But we can get it backwards. We may think, “I can serve. I can do this and that. God is going to be so pleased with me.” But He is looking for our hearts.
He may have us doing the exact same thing, but it is the heart He is after—that hearing heart.
This spiritual heart is the most vital organ in serving the Lord. I am speaking of our spiritual hearts, not merely our natural ears that hear through our minds and process things.
That is why Solomon warns us not to lean upon our own understanding. That is simply the mind, the way we process things naturally. We need the ears of our heart to be in tune with Him.
How vital this is, because in the world in which we are living today there are so many voices—so many things in Christendom trying to draw believers away, often using the name of Christ and even using Scripture.
They say, “God says this.” But does God say that? Did God say that?
How did the enemy tempt Eve? I almost said, “How did the Lord tempt Eve?” At least I had an ear to hear that did not sound right.
How did Satan tempt Eve? He said, “Did God say?” He questioned God’s authority. He questioned God’s word. He tried to create self-reliance within them, totally undoing the work of God. That is what he is still doing today.
We see much intellectualism and rationalization in Christendom today. There is a large movement called deconstruction. It is not great in any good sense, but it is great in size.
People take the basic truths within the church and try to deconstruct them. They say, “If this is true, what is the foundation?” Then they begin deconstructing everything, including the Bible.
But the natural man cannot understand spiritual things. So this always leads to death and doubting. It has an inevitable end.
They question suffering: “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” They question the church: “Why do we have a church full of sinners?” Well, yes—that is what it is designed for: to save sinners, bring them in, and allow them to be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.
But there is so much intellectualism, and there are so many false prophets. One thing about false prophets is that in their messages and books they often use the word of God to get a hook in you, and then they pull you away.
Most of them have very dynamic personalities. They are eloquent, and sometimes you can get caught up in their eloquence. I was talking with a brother once who said, “This guy was so eloquent, so dynamic.” I asked, “What did he say?” He said, “I do not remember, but I was struck by his dynamic eloquence.”
What is it that we are hearing? Lance used to comment that he could tell stories, and after he told them people would remember the stories. They would say, “Oh yes, remember that story?” But they did not remember why he told the story. They missed the whole point.
We can get distracted like that. The Lord tells us that many will come in His name, saying that Christ is this and that. That is why we need a hearing heart for discernment.
One way we need to pray for CFC is that there would be a clear voice: “Thus saith the Lord.” For our brothers who are teaching and sharing, and even in the fellowship time, may there be clarity—“Thus saith the Lord”—and may we be able to respond to it.
This is so different from the spirit of this age. Paul wrote to Timothy concerning the end times:
The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.
Who are they looking out for? Themselves and their own desires. They like a teacher because he tickles their ear. “That is so interesting. I have never seen that point. Oh, look at that. Is that not a cute story?” Their ears are tickled, but it never reaches the inner person. It stimulates the outside but never reaches the inside.
Focusing upon ourselves and our own desires totally rejects the cross. Self never desires the cross. That is why it is so vital in this hour.
There is a hymn that has too many verses for us to sing this morning:
Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
That is what He is after. Have we seen Him? Have we heard Him? Do we know Him? The wonderful thing is that the more you see Him, the more you want to see of Him. The more you know Him, the more you want to know of Him. The more you hear Him, the more you want to hear Him. You just cannot be satisfied.
What are our obstacles to hearing? We can get all complicated about it, but it is actually pretty simple. There are just two obstacles: sin and ourselves.
We are not going to focus on sin today, but sin includes not only moral matters. It includes covetousness, prejudice, unforgiveness, partiality, and many other things.
But praise the Lord: no matter the sin, God still loves us. He has the blood of the Lamb for us. While we were still sinners, He spoke to us the first time, and our hearts heard. We had that first glimpse of a hearing heart when we heard Him while we were yet sinners, responded, repented, and gave ourselves to Him.
I think most of us have more trouble with the self-life, with the great obstacle of “I.” Particularly as we think about preparing for conference, we can become so occupied with our service to Him that we lose track of seeing and hearing Him.
This is what happened to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2, from which we have been reading. They were busy and occupied with doing the right things—the traditional religious things of their time.
They were doing everything right. They had discernment. They could tell which speaker was right and which was not. They had toil and perseverance. But they had left their first love. Their eyes got off Him, and their hearts were drifting away from Him.
Self-love loves the outward. It loves to do things that people can see: “Look what I have done.” We can be deceived by our outward actions and by the praises of men.
One thing that led Solomon astray was the praise of man. Everybody was fascinated by his wisdom, knowledge, grandeur, and splendor. That is why he writes in Proverbs 27:
A man is tested by the praise accorded him.
If you receive much praise, you will be tested. How do you respond? Does it puff us up, or does it humble us? Solomon learned a lesson. He allowed praise to puff him up, and he went through years of being away from the Lord. Yet thankfully, in the end, the Lord drew him back.
Most of these obstacles are in ourselves. This is a challenge for CFC because we are doing faithful service. We are doing it unto Him and for our brethren. But we want to take the warning Paul gives in Galatians: “You started in the Spirit. Do not lose that. Do not end up in the flesh.”
You were running well. What hindered you? Continue being faithful. There are warnings to us as we serve. Sometimes, in the middle of service, we let our guard down and allow ourselves to get puffed up.
But thankfully, even when that occurs, there is a wonderful coming back to Him. He can convict us. He can speak to us. We can see that our eyes have gotten off Him.
I love the hymn by A. B. Simpson, “Himself.” It is all about this contrast. It goes through a whole list of comparisons: once it was for us; now it is for Him. Once it was for the blessing; now my eyes are on the Blesser. Once even in serving I was self-absorbed; now it is for Him alone.
This battle goes on within us. I know within my own self that I have served in the bookstore at the conference for many years. As the week goes along, I can confess—because I have confessed to the Lord and to brethren and asked forgiveness—that sometimes you get a little impatient with someone.
People come in and ask various questions or do various things, and you can lose your patience. You can start with a desire to serve Him, but then think, “If that brother asks me one more question about that book, I am going to throw it out of here.”
You can ask questions; do not worry. You can ask different people.
But we can come back, because in Him we have an eternal provision. There is always that cry of love, and that cry never stops. He is always crying out for us to come back to Him, to have that ear to hear.
We are thankful for the blood of the Lamb that cleanses us. He wants us to come back and repent. Each of the letters in Revelation speaks, most of them, about repentance.
Repentance is a change. In genuine repentance, you see a change in someone—not merely a change of words, vocabulary, or outward actions, though there may be some of that. You sense within the heart that there has been a change from within.
We do not have time to go through all seven churches, but I want to touch on Laodicea, the last church.
In Revelation 3:16, the Lord says:
So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.
Now, do not relate that to losing your salvation. You cannot lose your salvation, so do not go down that trail. It is speaking of something different. But the point He is making concerns their testimony.
They said:
I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.
But the Lord said:
You do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.
This is a characteristic of the end times, a characteristic of the days in which we are living. People can be deceived into thinking that they are serving God when they are actually just going through motions.
The church in Laodicea had all the right outward things going on. They were content. They had proper teaching and all of that. But they had lost their heart and zeal for the Lord. They were content with their knowledge of Him and of His word.
The Lord was actually outside, knocking on the door. That passage gets used often as a gospel message, and praise God for the number who have been saved through it. But He is actually knocking at the door of the church to come in. That is a sad place for the Lord to be. He wants to be in the church, in the presence of the people of God.
When I was thinking about those who considered themselves rich, I was drawn to think about the religious leaders in the Gospels. I was struck recently by the number of chapters, and the amount of time, that our Lord spent challenging the religious leaders—the scribes and Pharisees.
Why was He challenging them? He was pleading with them. At times, He was harsh, blunt, and straightforward. Why? Because He loved them. He wanted them to see the reality of who He is. He did not give up on them. He kept crying out, “Would you see who I am?”
But they were blinded by pride in their own knowledge of Moses and the law. They said, “We have Moses. We have the law.” Their pride in all they knew hindered them from truly hearing the very living Word of God who had come among them.
That is a temptation when we are rich in teaching and have a rich history. We need to be alert and aware of this. We have had more than fifty years of conferences. We cannot rest on that.
We cannot be those who say, “Oh, I have heard that. I know that.” No, we are ever grateful for those fifty years. If we combined all those years of teaching, what a great library of riches it would be—of how God has poured out His heart to us.
At times, we look at our own condition and say, “I have not really entered into everything.” But He is still encouraging us to press on. How privileged we are to have been able to hear so much.
A couple of years ago—though I am at the age now when everything is “a couple of years ago,” so I have no idea how long ago it really was—I was in the bookstore speaking with a brother about a book.
He said, “No, this conference and all, it is not for me. I just come and support it because I hope they can see. I hope they can get vision.”
It broke my heart when he said that. That is the spirit of Laodicea. This conference, this daily life with Him, is for every one of us. None of us have arrived. We all need this.
We come before Him with a humble heart for Him to teach us. There are unsearchable riches of Christ into which we need to enter.
When that brother said that, I was speechless. I had to walk away. It was not the time to have a conversation with him. But it grieved me so much. I do not want to fall into that trap.
We have heard so much. We have been blessed. We have a rich heritage, and praise God for it. But all that should do within us is create a greater hunger and a greater desire to know Him even more.
We have seen this, but there is so much more of the unsearchable riches of Christ. May we enter into that.
How does the Lord open the ears of our heart? How does He give us a hearing heart? Praise God, He is in the business of opening ears and opening hearts.
Psalm 40:6 gives us a contrast between outward actions and inward reality:
Sacrifice and meal offering Thou hast not desired;
Mine ears Thou hast opened.
Burnt offering and sin offering Thou hast not required.
Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Thy law is within my heart.”
It can sound strange at first: “Sacrifice and meal offering Thou hast not desired.” We might say, “Wait a minute. You gave the law. You said You wanted all this.” But then we see what the sacrifices and offerings were pointing toward. What is behind them? What is the heart of all these offerings?
“Mine ears Thou hast opened.” The word for opened speaks of digging out, boring out, piercing.
I do not know whether you have had the joy of having wax removed from your ears, but they have different ways of doing it. One involves a little corkscrew. When it first comes toward you, it looks like it is about that big. You think, “How is that thing going to get in my ear?” Then they put it in there, and it does not feel very good.
There is another method with suction. They suck it out, and it feels as though your whole brain is going to be sucked out through your ear. It is not a very pleasant experience.
I relate that to the cross. The cross is painful. I do not want to disillusion you, but the cross working in your self-life and opening your ears is painful to the old person.
But there is joy set before us—the freedom we enter into, being set free, and being able to have a hearing heart to hear His word. What fellowship and communion that is. What a joy.
Lord, how we need to pray, “Where I have wax in my ear, dig it out.” We want to enter into that law of life in Christ Jesus, not merely focusing on outward things, but on heart things.
Isaiah 50:4-5 also speaks of this:
The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples,
That I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word.
He awakens Me morning by morning,
He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.
The Lord God has opened My ear;
And I was not disobedient, nor did I turn back.
He awakens my ear to Shema—to listen, understand, and obey as a disciple. As we give ourselves unto Him, as we offer ourselves and say, “Lord, cleanse our ears,” He will open our ears.
What is the purpose? He awakens our ear as a disciple. He is the Master, and we come surrendering ourselves to Him to learn of Him. He can truly teach us, and we can have ears to hear.
May we place our ear under the government of the Holy Spirit. The more we hear His voice, the less we hear other voices.
The more you are in love with a certain voice, the less you hear other voices. They become less and less of a distraction. They are still going to be there. The enemy will still tempt us and try to rob, kill, and destroy. Self does not give up either. Even though it has been defeated, it continues trying to bring us down.
But the more we know and hear His voice, the more those other things fade away. How thankful we are for that.
What is the fruit of having a hearing ear, of having a hearing heart? Let us return to our opening verse.
The fruit of having a hearing heart is entering into being an overcomer:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.
Just as it says seven times, “He who has an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” it also speaks in each of those seven letters of “him who overcomes.” The one who has a hearing heart responds to His call. The fruit they enter into is overcoming.
We overcome as He overcame. Overcomers have a hearing heart. It is a heart that understands God, a heart that obeys Him, and a heart that is sold out to Him. Call it consecration.
We are not talking about being sinlessly perfect. But as we go through this life, He continues to woo us and point things out. As we have that hearing heart, one thing it does is make our conscience much more sensitive.
Our conscience becomes sensitive to sin. We say, “Oh, that attitude I had toward so-and-so was wrong,” and we repent. In the past, perhaps it did not bother us. We rationalized it away and said, “That brother is no good anyway, so I can think about him that way.”
No. The issue is our own hearts and our own personal responsibility. That is what He is after within each of our lives.
How do we overcome? Revelation 12:11 tells us:
They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death.
They had a hearing ear. They knew the vital necessity of knowing the reality of the blood of the Lamb every day of their lives. They knew they could not make it through a day without the blood of the Lamb continually cleansing, washing, purifying, and allowing them to go on.
Do we have that sensitivity concerning our great need for the blood of the Lamb? Not merely when we commit what we call big sins, but through that inner working which keeps our conscience alive and keeps our hearing heart from becoming stopped up.
I have noticed, as I get older, that you lose your natural hearing gradually. Then suddenly you realize that you cannot hear something. It can be the same with our hearing hearts.
If we do not allow the blood continually to cleanse us and do not have sensitivity to Him, we can start losing the sharpness and precision of hearing His voice. It becomes duller and duller, and suddenly we are not hearing. We are in a bad place.
But praise God, the blood of the Lamb brings us right back. The word of their testimony is that He is Lord. And loving not our lives unto death speaks of the cross working within us.
This is what He is calling us to in this hour: those who have an ear to hear, who can respond and overcome.
When we talk about overcoming, just as when we speak about hearing, the call goes out to everybody, but the response is individual.
Nobody else can hear for you. No other person or group can overcome for you. In the days we are living upon this earth, there are no overcoming assemblies. Until the Lord returns, it is the individual who overcomes.
But when He returns, there will be a corporate expression of His overcomers. Praise God. However your interpretation works out concerning the timing of that, I am not going to get distracted by it.
We have heard at CFC from Lance and others that among those overcomers there will be some from the Catholic Church, the Baptist churches, the Methodist churches, and many others. They are individually responding in this day and time.
But one day, at His cry and when the Lord returns, all those will come together as the corporate expression of His life—the overcoming one. Praise God for that.
As we conclude, the conclusion is really a prayer: in a fresh way, may we see the necessity of a hearing heart every day of our lives. This is not simply a message to prepare us for CFC; it is for daily life.
May each one of us spend time before the Lord, asking Him to search and prepare our hearts for this time. This is so vital. As we do that, we recognize our dependence upon Him, because we cannot prepare ourselves.
It is the Holy Spirit working in us who prepares us. He searches us. He speaks to us. He does the work of preparation. He cleanses our hearts. He opens the ears of our hearts. He is the One working.
We are thankful for all the preparation of physical things at CFC. It is absolutely necessary and great service. Praise God—it is no small thing. We could not have the conference without it.
But how much time are we spending praying for our hearts and for the full release of the Lord’s burden? I appreciate a brother who always reminds us that we need to pray for the full release of God’s burden.
That is the real essence of what we are after at the conference: the full release of His burden. As we prepare for Him to release His burden, and as we allow the Holy Spirit to prepare our hearts, then there are vessels prepared to receive His burden.
The more our hearts are prepared, the greater liberty it gives the speakers to release their burden. Any brother who has shared will echo this. Sometimes, when you are sharing, you feel as though there is a wall. You are fighting in the Spirit to break through.
But at other times, you say, “Wow, there is a oneness of spirit. These hearts are hungry. These hearts are prepared.” Then there is a great release.
It is not that speakers prepare while hearers prepare separately. We are preparing together, that the full word might be received and implanted within us, and that there might be release. We could have hearts to hear and understand.
When there is that atmosphere, it does not matter how much the speakers have prepared; inevitably, the Holy Spirit will bring out even more from them than they had ever thought to share. It is a greater revelation. It is a beautiful thing that comes forth.
We are in this together. This is what we are hungry for in this time. May the Lord touch our hearts, that each one of us would come with a fresh hearing heart and with this desire: “Lord, I want to have a hearing heart. I want to be one standing for Your heart and purpose.”
Lord, I am always amazed at Your long-suffering and Your patience with us.
Lord, as we have even touched this morning, really nothing new has been shared. But Lord, in Your mercy, You bring things back to us again. In Your love, You continue. You never give up on us, Lord.
What a comfort and assurance that is. It is so humbling, Lord.
So, Lord, as we are considering this conference, we want to be those who humble ourselves before You. We do not want merely to focus on being faithful with various physical services, which are so vital and essential.
But Lord, even above that, may we have our hearts prepared. Because with prepared hearts—with a hearing heart—it impacts even our physical service.
Lord, we desire that You would find a place and find ones to whom You could fully reveal everything that is upon Your heart in this day and time in which we are living.
We do not want You merely to have to keep crying out because of our obstinate hearts. Lord, we want to be those who can receive Your word. In receiving that, Lord, we could even be part of those used to hasten Your return, for Your glory and for Your honor.
Lord, we are thankful for another opportunity. We are thankful, as it says in Hebrews, that it is still called today.
Today, Lord, may we humble ourselves before You and ask You to come in and do the necessary work—not even merely what we think is necessary, because You see much more clearly than we do.
Do the necessary work within each one of our hearts, that we could be vessels fit for Your use during this upcoming time.
In Thy name, we pray. Amen.