On Listening to the Lord
Somehow I became the owner of two cats. They chose us and decided they wouldn’t leave. Don’t get me wrong, they have some value. They kill rodents and so I can’t say they are all bad. But perhaps the most frustrating thing about cats is that while they are intelligent enough to respond to commands, they simply do not. I have no doubt that the cats know when I am calling them yet they only stare at me unresponsively. If I want them to obey some command I have to physically pick them up and take them where I want them to go. This is inconvenient and also somewhat dangerous as they often resist my efforts.
The other day I read a verse of Scripture that captures well the human condition. Psalm 32:9 says: “Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridal to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near you.” The Psalmist could just have easily included cats in his example! The point is that even thought we are the only creatures on earth made in God’s image, we are just as stubborn and impossible to reason with as the most difficult of animals.
Even though we are equipped with intelligence (admittedly this does not come to all of us in equal measure), our conscience and God’s Holy Spirit, sometimes none of those move us in the direction God wants us to go. Sometimes we are so stubborn and hard-hearted that the only way to get us to move or to listen might be some physical constraint. The imagery here is a strong caution for all of us. Don’t be stubborn when God speaks!
How do we make sure that we don’t walk in this kind of stubbornness and self-reliance? Confession and repentance are the answer. Psalm 32 begins with a celebration of the blessings of forgiveness: “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1). The Psalmist ties these blessings to our willingness to confess our sin before God and repent from it. In fact, Scripture tells us that it is to our benefit that we would confess and turn from our sin: “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord;’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:3-5). This is a major key to keeping a soft heart, a heart that is responsive to God’s voice.