More on Lingering and listening!

Three degrees of listening to the Lord

In this psalm, we see a call to the Bride to listen intently to the Lord as she lingers in His presence – in fact, there are three degrees of listening:

Psalm 45:10-11 

Listen, O daughter,
 Consider and incline your ear;
 Forget your own people also, and your father’s house;

So the King will greatly desire your beauty;
 Because He is your Lord, worship Him.

1.    listen – to hear with your spiritual ears. It is so true, we can all hear the Lord, but are we listening? He wants us to listen to what He is saying. He is a very talkative God. The problem is not that it is difficult to hear, it is simply that we fill our ears with so many other things (music, TV, advertising, chatter etc.). We need to be still and wait on Him – listen to Him. He speaks inside our hearts as we pray and worship, through His Word, music/song, nature, people, communion, dreams and visions, life's circumstances, prophecy, preaching, angels etc.

Rev. 3:20, Jn. 10:27, Is. 30:30

2.    Consider – hearing and seeing; to observe and think about what you have heard. This means to really give attention to what you are hearing. It is one thing to hear the Lord…but we need to give careful, full attention to what He is saying.

3.    Incline your ear – turn aside and lean in on the Lord. When you are this close, you can hear every whisper! Once we have heard Him and carefully thought about what He says – then we can rest in Him, lean on Him and abide in the things He is saying. As we incline our ear, we can be secure in His love and the timing of His plans.

Then we hear the response of the Lord – He greatly desires our beauty – the beauty of the one who lingers in His presence. Of all the things that the Lord desires in the Word (there are 7 things He desires) this is the only one that he greatly desires! The Lord longs for fellowship with His people.

There is only one appropriate response: Worship Him!

More on lingering in God's presence: Here and Here