Hearing God

1 Samuel 2:12–3:20

Main Idea: As Samuel heard God, he found his purpose and meaning as priest, prophet, and judge. It gave him courage to speak hard words to his spiritual father, Eli.

1. Eli’s House Was Judged for Not Hearing God.
2. God Still Speaks.
3. Ways God Speaks to His People
   1. His voice: the Spirit of God
   2. His Word: the Scriptures
   3. His people: the church
   4. His world: the creation
   5. His Son: Jesus
4. Barriers to Hearing God’s Voice
   1. Inexperience
   2. Expectation
   3. Sin
   4. Unwillingness
5. Hearing God Clarifies Meaning and Purpose.
   1. Our purpose: to bring glory to our Creator
   2. Our purpose: finding the sweet spot

Introduction

Hannah’s vibrant worship in 1 Samuel 2 contrasts with the willful sin of Eli’s children and the dulled vision of the priest Eli in 1 Samuel 2:12–3:20. This section serves as a transition away from Eli’s priestly family and toward the priestly and prophetic duties of Samuel. The narrative achieves this transition most immediately by presenting the judgment of Eli (2:12-36) juxtaposed against the beautiful worship song of Hannah (2:1-11). Hannah experienced the Lord and worshiped Him in faith, but 2:12 opens with, “Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord.” The remainder of the narrative clearly shows why Eli’s household will fail and fall and why Yahweh raises up Samuel. Samuel will be a priest who will serve the Lord (unlike Eli’s family). Chapter 3 reveals the fact that Samuel will not only be a priest but a prophet as well. The chapter opens with, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare and prophetic visions were not widespread.” This is the first instance in the book of Samuel that we have mention of prophetic terminology (“word of the Lord” and “prophetic visions”). The role and office of the prophet are given in Deuteronomy 13 and 18, but in the days of Hannah and Elkanah, prophetic activity was limited. Neither Eli nor his children would be prophets, but Hannah’s devoted little boy would be the prophet and priest God’s people would need.

The language, the “word of the Lord” and “visions,” indicates prophetic activity in which prophets hear from God words of encouragement or rebuke and deliver these words to God’s people. That such prophetic activity was “rare” reveals that God’s word was not permeating the hearts of the community of the Lord. Without the word of God, the people of God perish. Moses’ injunction to God’s people just before his death reveals the seriousness of the word of God for His people. Moses has delivered the stipulations of the covenant with God as His people enter into the promised land. He urges God’s people to follow the command of the Lord and to receive it gladly. Moses says plainly, “For they are not meaningless words to you but they are your life, and by them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess”(Deut 32:47). Without God’s words and God’s vision, God’s people would perish.

In these days (1 Sam 3:1), the prophetic activity that brought the word of the Lord was “rare.” Hearing the word of the Lord was like finding a pearl of great price that was hidden in the field. And apparently, God’s priests were ineffective in teaching the people the word of the Lord. In verse 2, Eli, the great high priest at Shiloh, has about as much “vision” as the people. He cannot see and he cannot hear very well, as we noted in the introduction (p. 31).

The brief introduction here gives the setting for the focus of this passage of Scripture: hearing God. Imagine that you are in a coffee shop, a mall, or a concert with your family or friends. The noise around you is loud and distracting. But you are able to hear the person across from you or close to you. You are able to talk with them and carry on a full conversation. If you have children, you know what it is like to be able to pick out your child’s call in a crowd. “Daddy!” from one of our children immediately causes us to turn to our kids, even if there are other kids and parents around. Why are we able to screen out other voices and hear those we want to hear? How are we able to do it?

In a word it is focus. We focus on what we want to hear, and so we are able to pick it out. We give our attention to the voice that is most important amid all other distractions. It is like those Where’s Waldo? books. Do you remember those? Your job was to find Waldo in all the distractions. Sometimes it feels like hearing God is like finding Waldo—very hard to do, but once you find Him, you don’t want to lose that focus.

From 1 Samuel 3 we discover that hearing God is not like finding Waldo because God wants to be heard, so He speaks clearly and truly to us. God really speaks to His children so hearing God is possible, beneficial, and necessary to meet His call for our lives. God says in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” However, as we see from this verse, hearing God does require a certain kind of openness and a tenacity from us. This is the kind of openness we see in the life of Samuel, which is one of the reasons God uses him as the prophet and priest for God’s people.

What do we learn about hearing God from the experience of Samuel?

Eli’s House Was Judged for Not Hearing God

Often we look for handwriting in the sky, a special message in the milk we pour into the coffee, signs, or thunderclaps. We look for the special sign that tells us God is really there and He wants to talk to us. We look for an image of Jesus to show up on our pancake in the morning or a picture of the virgin Mary to show up on our toast. It may be true that He does sometimes speak like that. But more often than not, God does not speak with handwriting in the sky. In reality God is wonderfully diverse in how He speaks.

A key way God speaks is through Scripture. The book of Samuel is about God speaking: the entire book is a message given to His people so they might know Him. In other words, God really does speak, and today He speaks from Scripture. Samuel heard God’s voice because God really speaks. And this is the first point we ought to understand: there is a God who speaks today.

God longs for us to hear His voice. A beautiful picture is the little boy Samuel responding to God’s voice, saying, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.” Sometimes our ears are unable to hear Him. This was true of Eli. He could not hear God’s voice. His eyes were dull, and his ears were stopped up. Perhaps God spoke to him over and over, with no response from the priest, to the point that Eli’s ears were covered from the voice of God. It took him a number of times to recognize that it was Yahweh who was speaking to Samuel. And we have already seen in 1 Samuel 1 that Eli thought Hannah was drunk at the site of worship and did not perceive that she was earnestly praying. Eli could not see or hear God very well.

Modern people may be in the company of Eli, saying, “I just don’t hear Him. I just don’t see Him.” That is understandable. Life is so loud with phones, television, iPods, iPads, music, work, and other noises that it can be difficult to discern the still, small voice of God. However, just because we may not hear God speaking right now does not mean (1) there is no God, and (2) God does not speak. Eli’s deafness to the voice of God and blindness to the vision of God is not a reflection of the lack of existence or presence of God. Rather, his blindness and deafness indicate his spiritual state. Sometimes modern people are in the same boat.

God Still Speaks

We will explore below some reasons people today don’t hear God’s voice. But for now the important thing to grasp is that the experience of Samuel reminds us that God speaks. Samuel was a little boy with no experience with God. His mom gave him in service to the Lord. Still, despite his youth and inexperience, the text is unequivocal: God spoke to Samuel. Granted, Samuel didn’t know who the voice was, but God continued to speak: four times God spoke to Samuel.

And in the last instance, God walks in and stands before Samuel and calls his name: “The Lord came, stood there, and called as before, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’ Samuel responded, ‘Speak, for Your servant is listening’” (1 Sam 3:10). I’ve always found this imagery as extremely curious. How in the world does the living God come and stand before a little boy in the tabernacle? How can the God of the universe walk into Samuel’s room? Is He not too big? The text presents to the reader a God who walks right up to a little boy and speaks to him; the great and majestic God of the universe walks into Samuel’s room because He wants to speak to the boy. This text testifies that God really speaks, and we can really hear Him. The remainder of Samuel’s life is a story of a man listening to God.

The God of the universe wants to walk into the rooms of ordinary people to speak to them because He loves to speak with His people. The book of Samuel is about God speaking to His people: about His love, His plan, and His people’s sin. But the book of Samuel ultimately reveals God’s plan to heal their sin in Jesus. If it is true that God speaks, then we must ask, How does God speak to us?

Ways God Speaks to His People

His Voice: The Spirit of God

God audibly spoke to Samuel, and He did so to others as well. When Jesus came, He told His disciples that He had a great many other things to teach them; but when He went away, the Spirit of God would come to teach them, guiding them into the truth (John 16:12-13). In the Gospel of John, truth has a name, and it is Jesus. So the Spirit of God reveals Jesus. But the Gospel of John also affirms that the Holy Spirit would continue to teach and bring to remembrance all that God has said through His Word (see John 14:26).

His Word: The Scriptures

Scripture is God’s primary way of communicating to us. It helps us understand and confirm God’s voice. The writer of Psalm 119 says it this way: “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path” (v. 105). John Calvin, that famous theologian from the seventeenth century, said that the Scriptures serve as “spectacles”; as we look through these spectacles, we see the world aright. Without the true vision provided by the Scriptures, then our sight of humanity, our world, and our work becomes distorted in sin. So God’s Word illuminates our path and gives us the true story of the whole world, which culminates in the truth, Jesus Christ.

His People: The Church

God speaks through His people, as Colossians confirms:

Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Col 3:16-17)

Consider for a moment that God gives His people the great privilege of speaking the word of God to one another—not in a way that we provide “new” information about God, the church, or the world but rather that we teach and encourage one another in life through Christ and His Scriptures.

His World: The Creation

It is important to remember as well that God speaks through His world. As Romans informs,

What can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made.(Rom 1:19)

God speaks through the created world, informing humanity that there is a God who made the world and it is not an accident.

His Son: Jesus

Although God speaks of Himself in creation, God has spoken definitively in His Son, Jesus the Messiah. Jesus is the “firstborn” of creation, and all God’s work was accomplished through the Son (John 1). Because of this, our ability to hear what God is saying in His creation is made perfect in the One through whom all things were made (Col 1:15-20). Jesus is the definitive Word from the Lord.

As the writer of Hebrews says,

Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. God has appointed Him heir of all things and made the universe through Him. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So He became higher in rank than the angels, just as the name He inherited is superior to theirs. (Heb 1:1-4)

Even the life of Samuel testifies about the Son of God, Jesus Christ. I (Heath) remember clearly a spiritual hero writing in my Bible when I was a little boy (about 10 or 12 years old). He wrote, “Luke 2:52.” The idea behind writing the verse in my Bible was that I would go back and read the verse, which I did. The verse is about Jesus, when He was a boy. It reads, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people” (Luke 2:52). It was only years later, when I was reading through 1 Samuel, that I saw similar verses that caught my imagination:

The boy Samuel grew in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. (2:26)

Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and He fulfilled everything Samuel prophesied. All Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear in Shiloh, because there He revealed Himself to Samuel by His word. (3:19-20)

The description of Jesus in Luke 2:52 is the same as that of Samuel in 1 Samuel 2:26. Samuel’s divine favor and calling mirror those of Jesus, and vice versa. As Hannah recognized that Samuel was from the Lord, Mary recognized that Jesus was from the Lord. As Samuel grew, Jesus grew. As Samuel was priest and prophet (and almost king; see 1 Samuel 8), Jesus was the true priest, prophet, and king. In other words, Samuel’s life sets a pattern that testifies to Jesus. So while Samuel is a great character in the story of the book of Samuel, his life looks toward One who will come: Jesus the Messiah.

God’s Spirit, the Scriptures, creation, God’s people, and even Samuel provide testimony that God speaks. If this is true, and if these are really several ways God speaks, then we must ask a significant question: Why is it so difficult to hear God’s voice today?

Barriers to Hearing God’s Voice

Inexperience

When one looks at 1 Samuel 3:7, it becomes apparent that Samuel was inexperienced in hearing God’s voice. Samuel did not know it was God’s voice until Eli, who was more mature, began to help him. Those who are older and more mature in the Lord need to help those who are younger in the faith. Inexperience with the Lord prevents people from recognizing that what is heard is actually the voice of God.

Expectation

A question we must ask is whether we expect to hear God’s voice in the variety of ways described above. Do we read God’s Word and carry out our daily business with the expectation that God will speak? It is apparent that God does speak, but do modern people live with the expectation of God’s speaking to them? Once Samuel understood (through Eli) that it was God who was speaking, he turned up his expectation and tuned his antenna to the voice of God. As a boy, Samuel put into practice something he lived out for the rest of his days—an attitude of expectation: “Speak, for Your servant is listening” (3:10). Expectation positions us to hear God in the everyday of life. Expectation creates the ordinary moments of grace where God breaks in.

Sin

Unfortunately, Eli no longer could hear the voice of God or see the work of God. First Samuel 2:12-36 depicts the demise of Eli’s household, primarily because of sin. The text records the fact that he can hear all the things his sons are boasting about that are wicked and vile (2:22). He can hear the voice of others talking about the sins of his boys (2:23). He can hear others, but due to his sin he can no longer hear God. Yahweh says (through a prophet), “You have honored your sons more than Me, by making yourselves fat with the best part of all of the offerings of My people Israel” (2:29). Apparently, Eli and his sons were receiving the sacrificial animals from God’s people, but instead of giving the choice meat that belonged to God as a sacrifice on the altar, they were taking it for themselves as a meal. They literally “got fat” off of God’s people and God’s offering. As a result, God stripped Eli and his family of their priestly duties. As we saw in the introduction to this volume (pp. 27–28, 31–32), God then raised up a faithful prophet and priest to lead His people in the land, and this faithful one is Samuel (2:35-36). The reason for Eli’s deafness to God’s voice is sin, as the narrative of chapter 3 bears out.

But the story of Eli becomes the story of God’s people in the book of Samuel. They, like he, tend to listen to the wrong voice because of their sin. God still speaks, but God’s people cannot hear because of their brokenness and complicity and sin. What is worse, God’s voice may be heard, but it sounds terrible and frightening rather than the voice of a loving father, a heavenly King who cares for His people. Consider the primal pair (Adam and Eve) in the garden of Eden. When they sinned, God’s voice became a source of anxiety and fear rather than of hope and companionship. So too in Samuel. Sin either stops up our ears from God’s voice or makes God’s voice terrifying rather than comforting. Sin causes us to fear God’s voice rather than love God’s voice.

Unwillingness

The notion of “unwillingness” stands out as a strange but powerful idea. In the book of Samuel, one notes a contrast of people. There is Samuel, who willingly hears God’s voice and obeys Him. But then there is Eli and his boys (Hophni and Phinehas), who are unwilling to hear God’s voice and thereby disobey Him. A barrier to hearing God’s voice is an unwillingness to be open to His voice and what He has to say. Unwillingness may derive from selfishness, the fear of change, or general rebellion. However, unwillingness to obey God’s voice ends in disaster, as the book of Samuel teaches with startling lucidity.

So God speaks, and He wants to speak to people today. How does He do this? He will use Scripture, His Spirit, His people, His creation, and His Son to communicate with people. So first and foremost, modern people must move beyond the barriers in order to listen to these instruments of God’s voice. God wants to speak to people, real people, today. But what in life prevents us from hearing His voice? We must learn to experience texts like Psalm 40:6:

You do not delight in sacrifice and offering;

You open my ears to listen.

You do not ask for a whole burnt offering or a sin offering.

The phrase “You open my ears to listen” can be reasonably translated from the Hebrew “two ears You have dug out for me.” The image is powerful. God takes a pickax to our heads to mine the deafness and hardness of sin, inexperience, unwillingness, and sloth out of our spiritual ears. As Eugene Peterson comments, “The primary organ for receiving God’s revelation is not the eye that sees but the ear that hears—which means that all of our reading of Scripture must develop into a hearing of the word of God” (Peterson, Eat This Book, 92).

We need God to attune our ears in order that we might hear Him. As J. D. has said to the Summit Church over and over again, God reveals Himself to us, opens Himself to us, when we put our yes on the table with God without reservation or hesitation. God gives us an open ear as we lay our yes to God on the table. But why is it good to hear God? What are the benefits of hearing God? The book of Samuel clarifies and exemplifies the benefits of hearing God.

Hearing God Clarifies Meaning and Purpose

Samuel was prophet and priest and almost a king (1 Sam 8). No one holds all three titles in Israel except Jesus, who was Prophet, Priest, and King. Traditionally this is known as the trifold office of Jesus. Still, as Jesus follows and expands on the pattern of Samuel, it is clear that Samuel is a towering figure in the story in the books of Samuel. So this raises a good question for us: Are modern followers of Jesus to emulate Samuel?

We might be tempted to say yes. After all, he heard from God, preached the word of God, confronted evil, and followed God faithfully, even until his death. And it is true that Samuel illustrates the life of faith. But when we ask whether or how modern believers should emulate Samuel, we must respond negatively. Our goal should not be (at least in the first place) patterned on the life of Samuel.

Our goal should be to follow the One to whom Samuel’s life points: Jesus the Messiah! Jesus is our life and model as Christians. The Scriptures testify of Him, and we must not miss our Savior as we read Scripture. Jesus is the clue that unlocks the whole of creation. Paul reminds the Colossian church that Jesus is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn over all creation (Col 1:15). He says that all things are made through Him and for Him and must return to Him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German pastor and theologian, captures the magnitude of Jesus:

He is thecentre and the strength of the Bible, of the Church, and of theology, but also of humanity, of reason, of justice and of culture. Everything must return to Him; it is only under His protection that it can live. (Ethics, 56)

Our reading of Scripture must return over and over again to the center of everything, Jesus the Messiah.

Bonhoeffer’s words are helpful as we read the narrative about Samuel. As good as Samuel was, we must remember God spoke to Samuel because God had a purpose for Samuel that was specific to Samuel. But in Jesus we find our meaning and purpose in life. We find why Jesus has placed us in His world and what He calls for us to do in His world. In Jesus we discover life, and life to the fullest (John 10:10).

Why did God speak to Samuel? God spoke to Samuel so that Samuel would know God’s purpose for his life. God spoke to Samuel to raise him up as a prophet. God speaks to you and me to give our lives purpose. Our purpose will not look exactly like Samuel’s. God told Samuel he was to speak His prophetic word to Israel and her kings—specifically to Saul and David. God told Samuel he would anoint Israel’s true king, King David.

You and I don’t have that purpose. God has something different and unique for you and me. But this drives us to ask a foundational question: What are God’s purposes for our lives? We need to answer this question at two levels. God has already spoken on the first level, so it is not a mystery.

Our Purpose: To Bring Glory to Our Creator

At the most fundamental level, the purpose of every human ever created by God is that we would please, honor, and bring glory to the One who made us. Or as the apostle Paul says: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31 ESV). We exist to bring glory to the One who made us.

What does it mean to bring “glory” to God? It means to show God’s weightiness, His worth, His value, His majesty, and His beauty in everything that we do. It means to honor the Lord more than we honor ourselves. It means to put the beauty of God on display in the little and big things in life.

It is tempting to hear that and make it into a kind of “billboard” Christianity. In this way of thinking, to be a faithful Christian means to eat “Testamints™,” to model Christian T-shirts, to wear a cross around the neck, or to use churchy language in our tweets (#blessed). The thought is that these acts will demonstrate, like a billboard, that we love Jesus first and foremost.

Not to denigrate that stuff too much, but bringing glory to God is much deeper than those showy and often shallow expressions of Christianity.

Bringing glory to God in the whole of life means working out exactly what it means to live in such a way that honors God in everything—how we speak and work, what we wear and eat, how we care for our bodies and for those around us, and how we live in God’s world. We consider His pleasure and joy before we consider ours. We give Him the weight in our lives. And working this out can be really difficult because it’s deep and not shallow.

So how do we give God the glory in all that we do, practically speaking? Each person must work that out for himself or herself. However, there are some practices that will help us get on track when it comes to giving glory to God:

1. Read the Scriptures to discover the way of life God loves. Regular Scripture reading gives the shape and form of the Christian life, so we can encounter Jesus and listen to what He says about His world and our lives.
2. Live and learn with fellow believers in a local church to discover what following Jesus is all about in the little and big things. Common worship and life with fellow Christians is important because it provides the fertile soil for growing in Jesus and giving glory to God. When we listen to God’s Word preached in a local church week in and week out, we discover what God has said about a pattern of life that is pleasing to Him. Small-group Bible studies and study groups are a good place to understand the specifics of following God. Regular prayer opens us up to hear what God is saying about our lives—what we need to take up in life and what we need to put down for God’s honor and our well-being.

So what has the Lord already said when it comes to our purpose? He has already said to put Him first and give Him glory in all things. You and I will only know fulfillment when we begin to hear from God. We can talk to Him about any and every need we have. When you look at the experience of Samuel, you see a boy discovering what it means to live a fulfilled life as he hears God’s voice and follows Him, even if it is hard.

Our Purpose: Finding the Sweet Spot

Hearing God, second, clarifies for us more specific questions about purpose in life. Specific calling and purpose in life are often termed “vocation.” In her book Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good, Amy Sherman speaks about practical ways we find our purpose. Finding one’s purpose in life is that journey of discovery where we locate the places where God’s priorities, our gifting (and passion), and the world’s needs collide. The collision point is called the vocational “sweet spot.” See the following diagram (Sherman, Kingdom Calling, 108):

The collision point of divine priorities (discovered in Scripture), personal gifting (discovered in natural abilities and gifting), and the world’s needs (discovered by attending to areas of brokenness and sin in local communities) reveals the sweet spot for our purpose. We must understand that our sweet spot may change. We develop new talents and gifts as we grow and mature, and the world’s needs are always changing, at least to some degree.

The deepest need for people of the world is to know and love the God who made them. Because of this, it is vital that the world hears and receives the gospel of Jesus Christ, who reconciles all things back to God (Col 1:15-20). Broken people need to hear that they are far more sinful and broken than they could ever imagine, but they are more deeply loved by God than they could ever conceive. They need to hear that out of His love, God sent His one and only Son, so that through His sacrificial and atoning death on a cross, broken people might find forgiveness and hope. As broken and sinful people simply repent and believe in the Savior, they find themselves reconciled to God. This is the message of the gospel: not that we have loved God or could have earned our way to God but that God has loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice that takes away the wall of separation and brings us home (1 John 4:7-12). Hearing this good message is the deepest need of a broken world.

But it is not enough to proclaim the good news; we must also combat a broken world. We all know that broken people do terrible things: human trafficking, corruption, greed, and the like. At the root of all of it is sin and a separation from God. So we go to the root of the problem by proclaiming the gospel. But we also show a broken people who do terrible things that Jesus reigns in all things and over all things (Col 1:15-20). Jesus is King over everything, and so as Christians we discover the places of brokenness in the world and redirect them to the honor and glory of God.

For example, at the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, we have seen God clarify for many of us in the congregation the vocational sweet spot and take broken things in the community and redirect them for God’s glory. We saw the challenge of parentless children in the county and state. The overwhelming reality of orphans exposes a deep brokenness in the area: some parents are not able to care for children. But God loves the orphan! In the Summit Church we recognized the deep need of the community, and we saw that some in the congregation had a passion and a gift for caring for these children. So they leveraged their lives for the sake of the gospel. They knew God cares for the orphan and widow through the church, they have a passion for the orphan, and so they establish a way for the church to be the instrument God uses to raise up folks to foster and adopt children without homes. This is a good example of how one can find the sweet spot. J. D. often speaks of how believers can “leverage” their gifts, talents, and passions for the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we do, we discover that God uses us to be the instruments He uses to impact the lost and broken world.

But finding our sweet spot, leveraging our lives, and discovering our purpose is not a microwave-quick moment. In her book, Sherman reminds us that finding the sweet spot of our purpose is a journey, and it does not happen overnight (Kingdom Calling, 107–8). Although there are lots of needs in the world, not every need has your name on it. We must discern what God has for each of us to do today. This is why prayer and hearing God are so essential for clarifying our specific sweet spot of purpose. As we think about going on the journey to find our purpose, we will discover that it is a journey of prayer, of hearing God at various levels:

• Personal, private prayer times where we focus in on what God is saying to us
• Corporate prayers where we gather to declare back to God His immeasurable beauty, and we bring to God the needs of the community
• Praying “at all times” as we are attentive to the Spirit as He guides us into truth and highlights the needs of the day and the gifts God has given us to meet those needs

As we walk the journey of prayer, we will find a road that takes us inward: toward God and His greatest desires for us and toward understanding our gifting and passion. And the journey inward will then propel us outward: toward the needs of the world. In and through multi-leveled prayer and hearing Him, God clarifies our gifts, our talents, and our desires so that we can be instruments in our Redeemer’s hands.

As we will see in this commentary, when we lose our focus on hearing God, disastrous things follow. Eli lost God’s voice and so lost his position as priest. Saul preferred hearing himself to hearing God. His disobedience to God’s voice proved to be his undoing (1 Sam 15:22-23). Hearing God is vital to a vibrant and purpose-filled life. We must hear God because He is the great King who rules all of life, as we will see in the following chapters.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does this passage help you understand about God?
2. How does this passage of Scripture exalt Jesus?
3. Do you believe God speaks today? Why or why not?
4. How do you most often hear God in the ways described above?
5. In what ways do you think God is prompting you to look to the other avenues of hearing Him from those described above?
6. Do you agree that giving God glory is our most basic purpose in life? If yes, then how are you giving Him glory now?
7. In the discussion on the sweet spot of purpose, do you need to hear God to find your sweet spot? How are you going to pursue hearing God this week?
8. Why can Eli no longer hear God? Are your spiritual ears hardened like Eli’s? Why or why not?
9. What barriers to hearing God most relate to your experience with the Lord?
10. Why do you experience those barriers, and what do you need to ask God to change for you to move through them?