Are We Listening? by Linden Malki

When God created the universe, and the world, He said that it was Good. When He created man, He put the man in a garden to take care of it, and He told the man that he could eat anything except the fruit of one tree: the one that was in the center of the Garden.  The man heard the instruction from God, and it gave him a choice, the choice to obey. We know what happened: they listened, but they made the choice to disobey.

We live with this choice: we can listen or not; and we make choices. God has always given us His words, and they come with the option of obedience. When mankind made too many bad choices, God told one man, one man that He knew would listen, and told him how to deal with the consequences that were coming. When God was ready to start over, He spoke to Noah and again, gave Noah instructions, and gave him the option of listening and obeying.  Again, some people listened, and some of them took God seriously and some did not. We have enough instructions, we don't need any more words, we know what God offers, and we know that it comes down to a choice.

Abraham listened; Jacob listened, Moses listened.  They knew what God wanted; and they offered their families the choices.  Sometimes people listened; sometimes they obeyed. God spoke through prophets; He spoke through events and consequences. Some people listened; some actually learned what God wanted of us. Two thousand years after Abraham, the records were there. People who listened, or read what had already been said, knew what God wanted them to hear. 

And then God spoke again; this time directly through a part of Himself. Most of what Jesus said wasn't new; it had been said before.  Jesus spoke, more people listened; this time what God was saying was spread throughout the world. We have no excuse: we have the recorded words God gave people over the centuries readily available. We have the privilege of being able to ask and to listen to Him personally; we just in many cases need to stop talking and listen. It's available; we don't need new words. We have witnesses, we have events, we have what we need. We just need to listen!