Joshua, a precocious 2-year-old,  watched his mother baking cookies. “Please, may I have one?” he asked hopefully. “Not before supper,” his mother replied. Joshua ran tearfully to his room, then reappeared with this message: “Jesus just told me it’s okay to have a cookie now.” “Jesus didn’t tell me,” his mother retorted. Joshua replied, “You must not have been listening!”

Joshua’s motivation was wrong, but he was absolutely right about two things: God longs to speak to us, and we need to listen.

In 1 Samuel 3, another young boy learned those same ageless principles. When Samuel followed Eli’s counsel and prayed, “Speak, LORD, for Your servant hears,” he was open to receiving God’s powerful message (v.9). Like Samuel, we long to hear God speaking to us but often fail to discern His voice.

God spoke audibly to Samuel. Today He speaks to us by His Spirit through the Scriptures, other people, and our circumstances. But as a result of neglect and nonstop activity, some of us have become “hard of hearing.” We need a “spiritual hearing aid” like the one in Samuel’s prayer: “Speak, LORD, for Your servant hears” (v.9). This humble attitude is a real help for the spiritually hard of hearing.  — Joanie Yoder