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God's Provision to Hear Him
Speak
Learning a new language if transplanted in different
country
V Citizenship now is heaven so we
need to learn the language
God built into a portion of our brains a function that constantly
filters out unimportant information and focuses on what is meaningful
to us. We call it the Reticular Activating System (RAS), and this
is the way it works.
1. Positive Focusing – a new mother is
so tuned in to her baby’s needs that she can hear and respond
to its every sound. In order to rest, she has to move the baby
out of her room. Otherwise, every time the baby moves or sighs,
the mother wakes up.
2. Negative filtering - people who live next
to airports or railroad tracks after a while are no longer bothered
by the noise of planes or shaking of the house as a train rumbles
by.
3. Individual perceiving – if five people
see an accident or look at the same scene, they will come up with
completely different impressions
Once your mind had decided something is important – like the
crying of a baby – the RAS will bring it to your attention
every time.
V Your name
V Your parent’s voice/child’s
voice
V Farm Smells
V Gorgeous natural scenery that
is familiar
V Selective Hearing
V Going shopping or watching TV
with spouse
V Pleasure or Pain
The Reticular Activating System filters out the unimportant stimuli
and focuses on what is important at the moment. Once you have made
a distinction that a certain value, thought, idea, sound, picture,
or feeling is significant to you, your RAS is alerted. It immediately
transmits any information it receives regarding this significant
item into your consciousness.
When you decide that hearing God is vital, your RAS starts putting
God through whenever he speaks. You hear him with the same intensity
as a mother hears her newborn baby- and with the same prompting
to respond.
The RAS works to alert us regarding the spiritual world as we hear
our Lord speaking. It is our picker-and-chooser. It is the guardian
of the mind.
Your RAS records everything and will concentrate your attention
on what you have previously programmed to be important. If God’s
Word is vital importance to you, your RAS will put through all the
messages that come to you from Him.
Prayer, especially reflection, meditation, and contemplation,
is a training ground or practice setting for developing a listening
ear for God in the everyday. If you can’t hear him in quiet,
in the context of a group of Christians gathered in His name, you
won’t hear him when you’re busy.
Forms
V Meditation
V Praise
V Petition
V Intercession
V Speaking Scripture back to God
V Testimony
V Song - To sing is to pray twice.
To open one's heart to the harmonies and beauties of song is to
open one's soul to the Great Composer of the Universe
V Prayer at Altar
V Altar Call
V Inquiry Meeting
V Healing
V Concert of Prayer
V Confession
V Pastoral Prayer
V Responsive Reading
V Invocation
V Benediction
V Contemplative/Listening
V Lord’s Prayer |
