{"id":506,"date":"2011-01-24T08:55:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T08:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/listen-with-your-ears.html"},"modified":"2011-01-24T08:55:42","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T08:55:42","slug":"listen-with-your-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/listen-with-your-ears.html","title":{"rendered":"Listen With Your Ears…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"prayerhands.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>When it comes to God, it’s far too easy to get distracted. I want a few more moments of sleep. I try to pray, but instead I listen to the sounds of children downstairs or my mind wanders to today’s “to do” list or I’d rather read a book or check email or any number of other things.<\/p>\n

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But then I end up becoming less and less the person I want to be, the person God intends me to be. So I vowed, in the middle of the night last night, to try to listen more attentively to the whispers of the Spirit, to try to watch more closely for the nudges of His presence.<\/div>\n
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My mind was drawn to a conversation with William. A few days back, as we were battling through distraction in an attempt to get him dressed for bed, he said, “Mom, my listening ears are old and broken. I need to put on new ones.” He plucked new ones out of his pocket, put them “on,” and we were all set.<\/div>\n
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The Hebrew word for “hear” (as in, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One…”) is closely related to the word for “obey.” To hear clearly is to obey, as William and I discovered with his new listening ears. And to obey God is to flourish, to enjoy abundant life, to enter into the fullness of God’s reality all around me.<\/div>\n
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So I am trying to remember to put on my listening ears–to sit in stillness with eyes closed and hands open, to pray with faith that God responds, to ask for what I want, to trust that I can indeed hear from the Lord. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to God, it’s far too easy to get distracted. I want a few more moments of sleep. I try to pray, but instead I listen to the sounds of children downstairs or my mind wanders to today’s “to do” list or I’d rather read a book or check email or any number…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nListen With Your Ears... - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/01\/listen-with-your-ears.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Listen With Your Ears... - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When it comes to God, it’s far too easy to get distracted. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}