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Are you a talker or a listener? How willing are you to listen? Poor listening can get us in deep trouble. Even worst, you are asking to be in a crucible when you fail to listen to God.

We are nearing the conclusion of our examination of the Life of Christ and others from the perspective of Living in a Crucible. 

Symbolically, a crucible is the fiery trials we experience as we grow and develop.

Crucibles are painful, they are uncomfortable, and they hurt, but they are beneficial in developing our character.

From the Sabbath School Adult Bible Study Guide 2022 Quarter 3: Sabbath.School

See also Hope Sabbath School and 3ABN Sabbath School

Inviting the Holy Spirit’s Presence

God Almighty, give us a heart and mind to listen to you and a will to follow your lead.

In Jesus Name Amen.

Talking is fine, it is an excellent mean of communications. But communication is not one way. You speak, the other person listens. The other person speaks, you listen.

The same should happen when we are communicating with God. You speak, He listens. He speaks you listens.

However, it does not always happen that way. Poor listening creates problems. It leads to wrong assumptions and misunderstanding. Which leads to bad decisions and major blunders. On a personal level, poor listening leads to hurt feels, lack of trust and a weaken relationship.

On the other hand, failing to listen to God can put us in a crucible!

Have the Holy Spirit ever talked to you, but you failed to listen? What happened next? You don’t have to say. I know, everything went wrong, didn’t it? I can image your response later was, “Oh no! Why didn’t I listen?”

First Samuel tells the story of an old man, called Eli, who had two bad sons who refused to listen and obey God.

Eli also was responsible for the cared for a little boy who was not his natural son. Different from Eli’s sons, who refused to listen to God, this little boy had a heart to listen and obey.

Despite strong warnings from God, Eli’s two sons refused to change, they continued to do evil.

For more details on what the son of Eli did and the consequences of their actions you can read the entire story in 1 Samuel 2:12–1 Samuel 3:18.

When you read it, observe the difference between the one who listened, and the ones who refused to listen. Their outcome makes a compelling argument on why it is important to listen, especially when God is speaking.

Nevertheless, although called by God to do a special work, Eli’s sons could care less about serving Him. They had other things on their minds. You know, women, partying, drinking, sensual pleasure.

When Eli learns what God wanted, he talks to his sons about the evil things they were doing. Do they listen to Eli? No.

Nor does Eli take actions against them. He just allowed them to continue their work in the church despite their evil doings. His sons were evidently not ready to give their lives completely to God. They were bent on fulfilling their own selfish desires. They could care less about God’s plan for their lives.

A commentary from the Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4 says the following:

Eli was a good man, pure in morals; but he was too generous. He suffered the displeasure of God because he did not strengthen the weak points in his character.

He did not want to hurt the feelings of anyone and had not the moral courage to rebuke and reprove sin.

His sons were evil men; yet he did not remove them from their position of trust.

These sons desecrated the house of God. He knew this, and felt sad for the consequence of it, for he loved purity and righteousness; but he had not sufficient moral force to suppress the evil.

He loved peace and harmony, and became more and more indifferent to impurity and crime.—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 516.

In contrast, young Samuel, the little boy under Eli’s care was completely different from Eli’s birth sons.

When you read 1 Samuel 3:1-18 you will discover that the little boy Samuel that Eli cared for became a prophet.

In the book Child Guidance, we find that During the first three years of the life of Samuel, his mother carefully taught him to distinguish between good and evil. By every familiar object surrounding him she sought to lead his thoughts up to the Creator. In fulfillment of her vow to give her son to the Lord, with great self-denial she placed him under the care of Eli the high priest, to be trained for service in the house of God. . . . His early training led him to choose to maintain his Christian integrity. What a reward was Hannah’s! And what an encouragement to faithfulness is her example!—Child Guidance, p. 197.

This is why it is so important that parents teach their children about God in their early years. They must learn early what it means to be in the habit of listening to God and obeying him.

This is the point that the preacher Charles Stanley makes when he describes how important it is be in the habit of listening to God’s voice. He calls this openness to listening “shifting into neutral. Stanley says: “The Holy Spirit . . . does not speak for the sake of passing along information. He speaks to get a response. And He knows when our agenda has such a large slice of our attention that it is a waste of time to suggest anything to the contrary. When that is the case, He is often silent. He waits for us to become neutral enough to hear and eventually obey.”—The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), pages 179, 180, adapted.

The choice is in our hands? It is your choice, your call. How willing are you to listen and obey God? What things keep you from listening to Him? Are there things in your life you need to get rid of. What things are keeping you from developing the habit of listen to God?

Yes, God speaks to us. But to hear him we must be willing to listen and obey. Start today, set aside sometime every day to pray, read his word and think about, meditate on and evaluate your life in contrast to the instructions you receive from reading the Bible.

There is another thing, besides not listening that can get us in deep trouble. Check out Day 5: Self-Reliance