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Greatest Challenge to Hearing God?

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I know he didn’t hear me. I asked him, “Son, what did I just ask you to do?” He looks up at me with his big, brown eyes, “Umm, I don’t know. Can you tell me again?”

Photo Credit: ashlibean via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: ashlibean via Compfight cc

We all have done it. Whether we are a four-year-old boy busy playing and talking, a 14 year-old teenager plugged into their own world, or a 53 year-old man watching his favorite sporting event on TV.

Someone can stand right in front of us talking directly to us, and we won’t hear a word they say.

I usually get frustrated when my son does this. It seems that the only thing that works is for me to patiently get down on my knees, take his face gently in my hands and ask for his eyes.

Then he hears me.

Greatest challenge we have to hearing God?

We often cry and complain that we don’t hear God speak to us. In any way or form.

I think it’s just like any of our relationships. We don’t hear Him because we CAN’T hear him. He is right in front of us, speaking directly to us, and we don’t hear a word He is saying to us.

Our attention span has shrunk to seven-second sound bites. We can’t sit and listen to hardly anything or anyone without some kind of distraction.

Sit and pray? Yeah, right. Sit and listen? Forget about it.

That’s the biggest challenge to hearing God—Distraction.

We so easily pay attention to everything around us, much that will lead us astray. Yet, He is like the father kneeling and taking his son’s face gently in his hands.

God gently redirects our attention to Himself, so we can listen and hear His voice.

I hope that I will not continue to be distracted by the things of this world or look away from His gentle eyes.

I want to hear His voice. I want to know Him.

[quote cite=”Psalm 46:10 NIV”]He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”[/quote]

About the Author

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I am a longtime Austinite. Married my beautiful wife over 35 years ago. Adopted our son September 2012.
As a small business and nonprofit coach/consultant, I have found my sweet spot. I lean on my varied background of corporate, small business ownership, writing, and pastoring as I work to help small business owners and nonprofit founders build the business they want to have.


  • I’m guilty of this, far too often. The whole ‘be still’ aspect is a challenge. Perhaps with the multitude of items around us today, that we have become adept at multi-tasking, that multi-tasking is now an expected form of function in our lives at work, home, play, elsewhere is what has led to our attention deficit. It’s when God allows pain into my life that I often find myself being still and being attentive. Thanks for this post and for it bringing to light my own fallacies and shortcomings. Blessings friend.

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