Life Expectancy – Listening to God

By: Jana Greene

“When you wait to hear from God, expect him to give you a dream, an insight; this is the faith factor where you wait expectantly.” – Rick Warren

Listening.

All day long, I’ve been asking God to tell me why He gave me the word “listening” to write about today. The problem is that my mind wouldn’t be still enough to listen for His answer to my questioning. When my spirit finally became still, the communication was as clear as a bell.

“Are you listening expectantly? Or just putting prayers ‘out there’?” Said Abba.

That’s an excellent question, and the answer is often the latter.

I immediately thought about the SETI Projects – scientific research using the best technology on earth to put signals out in space, so that if there were any intelligent life ‘out there,’ they might give us a  signal in response.

“There are great challenges in searching the cosmos for signs of intelligent life, including their identification and interpretation. SETI projects use the best available scientific knowledge to conduct experiments, which has traditionally led to searches for electromagnetic radiation emitted by advanced technologies. Radio telescopes are used to investigate the cosmos using large radio antennas.” – Wikipedia (which knows all, of course.)

When it became perfectly reasonable to embrace the likelihood of extraterrestrial life while denying the existence of God,  I do not know. Somewhere along the line, things went terribly wrong. Many scientists consider SETI to be pseudo-science – adding an itchy faith issue to what is accepted as hard-and-fast method. There is something out there, we just don’t know what it is….but we are sure enough that it exists to keep listening!

It occurred to me that nobody goes to the trouble to send out signals without making the effort to listen for a reply. Parts of the scientific community have been listening for a response from space for decades now. They just keep listening because they ultimately expect a response.

Which is more than I can say for myself at times, because listening is not my strongest attribute. But I’m learning.

When I pray and then listen expecting God to answer, my antenna is up, and the signal is clear.

When I pray just to put prayers out there, it become pseudo-spirituality.

Listening and expecting a response from Holy Spirit opens up all kinds of supernatural, extra-celestial communication. God wants us to expect a reply. He expects us to listen with expectancy, and He wants us to hear from Him.

Clear as a bell.