Learning to Listen

It was one of those mornings when you could see your breath and hear your steps. The puddles had ice around the edges. But I was warm inside my hunting suit. I was with my dad, and we were on a deer drive. I was about 11 or 12 years old. This was a common part of my Saturday mornings during the winter. We were a part of the drivers. Certain hunters took up positions in the woods. We released the dogs and then walked through the woods seeking to drive the deer towards our hunting partners. We came to a creek and needed to find a way across. As we walked parallel to the creek, I was walking on the bank that sloped down toward the creek. It looked really cold down in that water, but I had everything under control. My dad was walking on top of the bank but not on the slope. He told me to come and walk beside him. I didn’t listen. He warned me to get off of the slope. I knew better and had everything under control. And then it happened. My foot hit a frozen spot. I fell on my side, slid down the bank, and landed in the freezing cold water. It literally took my breath away. I held my shotgun above my head. The water came up above my waist. I looked at my dad. He looked at me with an “I told you so look.” I waded across the creek. He walked across a log that had fallen across the creek. He stayed dry. I did not. We were miles in the woods and still had miles to go. It was one of the most miserable hunts of my life. All because I did not listen to my father.

God has spoken to us through His Word. We are called to obey. We need to listen to our Heavenly Father. Sometimes men can be hard-headed. Just ask our wives. We think that we have everything under control. We think that we can beat the odds. Somehow we deceive ourselves into thinking that we will be the exception. We think we can live in disobedience and avoid the consequences. I have dealt with many men over the years who have convinced themselves that they can walk on a frozen, slopping creek bank and never fall in. Everyone else may fall in, but not them. We all deceive ourselves like this sometimes. And make no mistake about it, it is deception. There is a much better way to live. It is a life of listening to what God says. It is a life of obedience. I heard what my dad said on that cold morning years ago. I just didn’t do what he said. There is a big difference.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;  for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.  But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22-25).

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