Transcript & Slides: Are You Listening?

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Are You Listening
By David Feddes

Are you listening? We're in a course on total fitness. We've been looking at various dimensions of spiritual fitness and gotten at least a taste of other areas of fitness—of living by God's Word and wisdom in ways that succeed and flourish. But every once in a while, we've got to pause and simply ask the question: Are you listening? Are you taking in what's being taught? And are you doing anything about it?

I don't want to be rude, but if you're taking this class just to pass some quizzes and get another course on your transcript, you're wasting your time. You probably ought to just drop out, because the whole purpose of this class is not just to add a little more information that you can put on a transcript, but to change your life—to change the way you live in various ways.

And so rather than go on to some more content right away, I want to simply ask, first of all: are you listening? Has anything you've studied and learned so far changed how you act and how you behave? Keep that question in mind, and we'll keep asking it as we go through this talk.

In the book of Proverbs it says, “Now then, my sons, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me... For whoever finds me” (that is, whoever finds wisdom) “finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death” (Proverbs 8:32–36).

Proverbs is all about wisdom in the various practical areas of life. And if you love wisdom, you find life. If you won't listen to wisdom, you harm yourself and you actually love death. So listen to me—that's the appeal of wisdom. Are you listening?

I'll give a few examples from the book of Proverbs where some people listen and others don't, with disastrous results. Proverbs says, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them” (Proverbs 1:10). Don’t go along with people who say, “We're going to attack others and get their stuff and we're going to enjoy a whole gang fellowship here.” Beware of gangs. And that has stood in God's Word for a very long time. Many parents have warned their children not to join a gang, and yet kids do join gangs—some of them with disastrous effects on others and often on themselves.

“He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20). Pick the right companions, because the wrong ones can really mess you up. “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). When you find the right companions—and above all, the greatest companion, our Lord Jesus Christ, the ultimate friend—then companionship can change your life for the better. But are you listening?

Who do you hang out with? Some people who have gotten in trouble in the past find themselves in jail. And then when they get out, they go right back to their old companions who got them into that mess in the first place. You need to listen and find new companions to hang out with if that's been your problem. And so the power of companionship is something Proverbs speaks very much about. But are you listening?

Proverbs speaks about sexual desire and about wrong sexual desire. And the Bible says, “Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house... At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, ‘How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors. I have come to the brink of utter ruin’” (Proverbs 5:8,11–14).

Many a church leader has not been wise in the way he relates to members of the opposite sex and has wrecked a ministry as a result. Many people have gotten themselves or other people into great trouble because of sexual folly. And we know this. Some have gotten into pornography, and rather than find ways to get out of it—rather than being accountable to others, rather than seeking help and trying to break with it—they get deeper and deeper and deeper into it. And it ruins marriages. It ruins one's own soul. It ruins your boldness for the Lord, your joy in the Lord.

And so sexual desire, Proverbs teaches, is something that you've got to focus on the spouse God gives you. And if you have that headed in any other direction, you've got to keep far from it. Or you may end up groaning and saying, “I didn't listen—and wow, did it cost me.”

Pastors who think they can just hang out with the women who aren't their wife, and do lots of stuff with them, and maybe have a little innuendo while they're with them and think it's a big joke—I've seen time and again that ministry ends up in flames.

And then there's alcohol. “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). The Bible clearly teaches that getting drunk and drinking to excess is sinful and damaging. But are you listening?

“Who has woe? Who has sorrow?” Proverbs answers: “Those who linger over wine” (Proverbs 23:29–30). And it goes on to describe, in kind of humorous but also very sad detail, how they’re like somebody at the top of a ship’s mast, swaying back and forth and all over the place and unsteady. And they've got their wine, and in the end it “bites like a snake and poisons like a viper” (Proverbs 23:32). “They hit me,” you’ll say, “but I'm not hurt. They beat me, but I don't feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?” (Proverbs 23:35).

That's the terrible thing about alcohol. You just can't listen. You can't learn from life. You're at this party and you drink and you get beaten, but hey—you were drunk at the time and you didn't feel it. And where's my next bottle? Or another disaster comes your way. Your spouse says, “Man, I wish you would quit drinking. It's wrecking our marriage.” And you won't listen. You just keep on drinking.

You see your kids being alienated from you. You see their lives getting messed up. I've known alcoholics, and their kids are getting suicidal. They're desperate. And the alcoholic even knows it—and he'll listen to their problem and then say, “Well, where can I get another bottle?” It's just tragic.

But this inability to listen—I've talked with people who are members of a family of an alcoholic, and I'll say, “You really need to go to Al-Anon.” That's a support group which will help you to understand the illness and the addiction of your alcoholic family member. But some of them won't go, and they just remain part of the system, and they remain enabling that alcoholic.

I'll say to an alcoholic, “You've got to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. You've got to break with your drinking. You've got to admit that you're powerless and that God can help you and that you have other people to help hold you accountable and support you in it. You've got to go to AA.” And some do. And I know ones who've been free of alcoholism for decades because of it. But I know others—they received the same advice, but they would not listen.

And again, alcohol is a marriage and family wreck. It's a ministry wreck. Some people who are ministry leaders get into drinking. Many people—many, many people—who've gone to prison or find themselves in jail had problems with alcohol and drugs. It's something that absolutely has to be reined in. And so I just urge you, as you think about these things: listen. If alcohol has a major part in your life, it's got to go. “Wine is a mocker, beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). Proverbs says it. But are you listening?

Money. Money problems can damage our individual lives. They can also be damaging in the realm of ministry, where some pastors misuse the money of a congregation or they've misused their own finances and they're not in a good situation to provide for themselves.

“Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth” (Proverbs 10:4). There’s a lot of Proverbs about money. I’ll just mention a few here. We’ll find out a lot more when we talk about financial fitness.

“Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil” (Proverbs 15:16). So it’s good to work hard and make some money, but sometimes even if you can’t make a lot of money, if you’re following God, that’s a lot better than being some rich fat cat.

“Do not be a man who puts up security for debts” (Proverbs 22:26). Don’t let other people’s debts drag you down. Don’t be unwise about that.

Be generous with your money. “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done” (Proverbs 19:17).

If you want to be a true follower of Jesus, don’t let money be your master. You can’t have two masters. You serve God or not, but you can’t serve God and money at the same time. You’ve got to serve God and then manage your money wisely. And again Proverbs says these things. Are you listening?

Have you become wise and a hard worker in your management of money? Or do you love death? Do you just love your alcohol too much? Do you love the wrong companions too much? Do you waste money too much? Do you love death?

“Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself” (Proverbs 13:13). “A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). The Bible gives many examples of that. One of the most grievous ones was Pharaoh.

Moses went to Pharaoh and he said, “This is what the Lord says: Let my people go.” Pharaoh said, “I do not know the Lord and I will not let your people go. Who is the Lord that I should obey him?” (Exodus 5:1–2). Well, he got a very tough introduction to the Lord and to God's power—into the plagues of God and to the destruction—and still he would not relent. And then even after the ten plagues, when he let them go, Pharaoh decided later on that he was going to go after them anyway. And he lost his whole army and perished in the Red Sea.

A man who was stiff-necked after so many opportunities—suddenly there’s destruction. And so wisdom comes to us to bring us life, to help us flourish, to help us taste of the tree of life, to gain fitness in so many different areas of life. And wisdom comes to us promising the way to that abundant life in Jesus Christ.

And if you don’t want to listen to that wisdom, there’s just one explanation: you must love death.

So are you listening? That’s the big question we want to keep asking as we go along.

When we have hearing problems—when we’re not listening—it often means, in fact it almost always means, there’s a heart problem. And Jesus talked about the heart very much. And some of his stories show what happens when we have hearing problems. Jesus would often say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Luke 8:8).

A preoccupied heart is a heart that’s just too busy. And a heart that’s too busy with this, that, and the other thing is unresponsive to God’s voice. Jesus told the story of people who were invited to a great banquet, but they all made excuses. They all had something else to do, and so they missed out on the banquet because they were preoccupied with their own stuff and they didn’t want to bother with the king and his banquet (Luke 14:16–24).

There’s also the fruitless heart, which doesn’t produce crops even though the seed of God’s Word is there. And Jesus tells a parable of different kinds of soil. Some soil is so hard-packed from so much activity, and the seed just lands there and the birds take it away. And that’s like the devil just coming into a heart that’s hard and just sweeping away the Word of God before it ever sinks in. Others are kind of shallow, and they’re all excited about the Word for just a little bit, but then they’re like seed on shallow soil or rock, and it springs up right away but then when the sun comes out it withers right away. That’s what happens when shallow people receive the Word for a little bit, but then when anything tough comes along, they give up on it.

Then there’s the weed-filled heart. There’s thorns and weeds that spring up along with the seed, and they choke out the seed. And Jesus says that’s like having all these cares and pleasures of life that are all filling your heart, and there’s just no room for the seed to grow and bear fruit. But there’s also a heart that is good soil and it produces a lot.

The fruitless heart—though all those different kinds of soil have something in common: that hard-packed path, that rocky soil, and that weedy soil—they’re uncultivated. They need to be plowed up. As one of the prophets says, “Plow up your unplowed ground” (Hosea 10:12). You plow your heart through repentance. And that seed can then fall into the repentant, cultivated heart where the soil is deep, where the thorns have been dug up, where the rocks have been removed, where it’s not a hard path but it’s been plowed.

So if you’ve got hearing problems, it means that your heart may need to be cultivated in order to become good soil.

A self-centered heart is an unloving heart. Jesus told the story, for instance, of a rich man who ignored the beggars around him and wouldn’t do anything for them. And then when he died, he pretended as though he couldn’t have known, and he wanted a messenger sent from the dead to warn his brothers. And he was told, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

And in fact, someone did come back from the dead. He was even named Lazarus. Jesus raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, and his enemies still wouldn’t listen to him. Jesus himself rose from the dead, and his enemies still wouldn’t believe it. But the self-centered heart, the unloving heart, won’t hear God’s Word. That’s what was going on with that rich man. He acted like he’d never had ample warning, but he had known what God’s Word said. He just wouldn’t listen because he was too self-centered, and that made him unloving.

And then there’s just the doomed, unbiblical heart. Jesus says that anybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice—who won’t listen and put them into practice—is like a foolish man who builds his house on sand. When the rains come down and the streams rise and the wind blows, it collapses with a great crash (Matthew 7:26–27).

A heart that just isn’t interested in the Bible is a doomed heart—headed for a big crash when the storms come.

So if you have hearing problems, you’ve got to realize that there’s heart problems. And as we said in an earlier talk, if you want to be spiritually fit especially, you need a healthy heart. Jesus said, “The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart” (Luke 8:15).

Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart” (Proverbs 3:5). “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). The prayer of the psalmist: “Give me an undivided heart” (Psalm 86:11).

You need a healthy heart. And for that to happen, God gives you a heart transplant and transforms your heart and causes you to be born again.

Are you listening? Have you received that new heart in Christ? If not, you must—because otherwise, just to take a class—what good is that?

You need the new heart. You need a healthy heart. And then you need to develop spiritual fitness.

We’ve seen that we’re spiritually fit when we’re close to God and we’re resistant to evil. And the practices that lead to fitness are meant to draw us into fellowship with God, to develop his grace in us. When we’ve blown it, we thank God that he gives us more grace. And then submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil. He’ll flee from you. Come near to God. He’ll come near to you (James 4:6–8).

We’ve talked about what it takes and what’s involved in coming near to God and resisting the devil. But are you listening?

Are you doing anything different than you did before? Are you following any of the practices that develop nearness to God? Did you ask yourself and take to heart the questions of spiritual fitness testing?

Are you desiring God more and more in your life? Are you resisting the devil, the world, and the flesh? Are you loving and caring toward others? Are you willing and able to forgive? Are you heavenly-minded? Are you faithful in Bible intake and prayer and other spiritual disciplines?

Those aren’t just questions that appear in a lecture. Now you’re going to get quizzed on them. Those things are tests of how your spiritual health is. Are you listening? Are you taking them to heart? Are you getting a realistic idea of your spiritual health? That’s the whole point of asking these questions.

And then we thought about feeding on God's Word: to read it daily yourself and with your family, to memorize portions of it, to meditate on it and think it over—and how the Word applies to you and relates to your life. Think about things in your life, and then the Holy Spirit brings the Word to bear on it. To listen to the preaching of the Word in church and from others in Bible study groups. To apply what you learn and act upon it. To journal and write it.

Are you doing any of that? You listened to a presentation about it. Maybe you want to take a quiz about it. But are you doing it? Are you listening?

Now let me just say that when you learn a number of new practices, it may not be very reasonable to put all of them into practice at once. It may be wise for you to take one or two things that you haven't been doing and make them part of your life, and then go back and think about it later on—once those are ingrained into your life—and add a little something more in how you feed on God's Word.

So I'm not saying everything all at once or else it's a total failure. But have you made any change whatsoever? Are you growing in your ability to feed on God's Word?

Really, as you move along and you take a class like this and the things you learn in it, you should take stock once in a while—a few weeks from now, a few months from now—and ask yourself, "How much of this am I practicing in developing my spiritual fitness?" And the same holds true for other things that we’ll look at later on in Total Fitness. Are you putting these things into practice?

We talked about healthy prayer patterns: praying alone and praying together with others. Praying spontaneously on the spot, as well as having a pattern and schedule for prayer. Praying from your heart, but also having some guides for prayer. And we talked about some of those possible guides—using the Lord’s Prayer as an outline and a structure for prayer that then you express more and more based on each of those statements of the Lord’s Prayer.

We talked about adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication—ACTS—as a pattern for prayer. Praying the words of the Bible—the Psalms, the prayers of Paul, the prayers of Revelation. Praying like children, saying things like, “Daddy, please,” “Thank you,” “It’s not fair,” and so forth. Those are some of the guides that we gave for prayer.

But now my question is this: are you listening? Are you seeking the Lord more in prayer? Are you finding ways to develop your prayer life? If your prayer life was already doing great—well, wonderful. But if not, are you taking any steps to develop stronger patterns for prayer?

We talked also about taking a break—about disciplines of abstinence: about rest, taking a break from busyness; solitude, taking a break from people and being by yourself sometimes; silence, taking a break from noise and being still before God; secrecy, not doing things in front of others all the time but doing things secretly, just because God is watching you; fasting, taking a break from food to focus on God; submission, deciding that for a while, I'm just going to let others have their way—unless it would be sinful—but otherwise, I'm not going to be pushing for my way for this period of time. I'm just going to take a break from control and submit. Or sacrifice—take a break from plenty and give generously. Maybe give a little more than you can afford once in a while and do that as a discipline, where you take a break from calculating every penny, and where you take a break from having always everything more and more for yourself, and bless others.

These are disciplines where you take a break that get you out of ruts—and then come back to enrich your busy times. Your busy times are enriched by your rest. Your times with people are enriched by the time you've spent alone. Your ability to be silent has made you better when you do talk. Your secrecy has made you a better person whose light can shine when you're actually in front of people, because you're genuine, not just trying to impress them. Your fasting helps you to handle food more wisely and helps you to not have your stomach as your god. Submitting to others helps you then to interact with others and be bold when you need to be. Sacrifice means that you're not dominated by your needs all the time.

Taking a break—are you listening? Did you actually put any of this into practice? Did you ever go off by yourself? Did you say, “Man, I've been working 24/7. I've been way too busy. I need to really take a Sabbath. I need that day of rest to worship with God's people and just take the day off”?

Are you doing any of this? Once again, you don't have to do all of it at once. But as the Spirit lays something on your heart, say, “Boy, that's a practice I really sense that I need—and I need it now—and I'm going to put it to work in my life.”

Are you listening?

When we get into Total Fitness training, we've talked about the big picture. We've talked about spiritual fitness and spiritual fitness training and Bible intake and prayer life and taking a break in various ways. Have you been listening? Has it made any difference whatsoever for you?

Once again, without being too rude, the whole point of the class is to help you to flourish—to make decisions and to follow practices that are going to bless you. And that means you’ve got to listen. And it’s just a waste of time to look at some talks, fill out some quizzes, and move on unchanged. What a waste of your time to do that.

When you hear about physical fitness, there’s going to be some things related to what you eat and how you exercise. You can learn from that and put it into practice, or you can just ignore it—and it will do you no good.

You can handle your finances the way you always have, and if you’re already wise at it—well, good for you. But if you’re not, then be listening. When you’re learning about intellectual fitness, or how to manage your emotions, or what to do in relationships, or things that are practically important for your job—take them to heart and keep thinking about them.

There’s a sense in which I haven’t said anything new in this talk. I’ve just been reminding. But that’s what a lot of life is about. Once you discover and learn something, you need to keep reminding—keep going back to it—and keep putting more and more of it into practice in your life. You listen, and first you say, “What are two or three of the things that strike me most that I need to work on first?” And you go after that. And then once you’ve added something, then you integrate other healthy patterns into your life.

But are you listening?

Please don’t go any further in this class without putting something into practice of what we’ve already covered. And then, as you move forward, be someone who hears and puts into practice the things that you discover—that God lays on your mind.

“Now then, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways,” says wisdom. “Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me... For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me”—all who hate wisdom—“love death” (Proverbs 8:32–36).

Are you listening?

Are You Listening
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

 

Are you listening?

Now then, my sons, listen to me; 
blessed are those who keep my ways. 
Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me… For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the LORD. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:32-36)

Companions

My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them. (1:10)

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. (13:20)

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (18:24)

Sexual desire

Keep your way far from her… lest at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, and you say, “How I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin.”  (5:8-14)

Alcohol

Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise. (20:1)

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?... Those who linger over wine… In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. “They hit me,” you will say, “but I'm not hurt! They beat me, but I don't feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?” (23:29-35)

Money

Lazy hands make a man poor,
but diligent hands bring wealth. (10:4)

Better a little with the fear of the LORD
than great wealth with turmoil. (15:16)

Do not be a man who … puts up security for debts. (22:26)

He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him. (19:17)

Do you love death?

All who hate me love death. (8:36)

Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself. (13:13)

A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy. (29:1)

Hearing problems,
 heart problems

• Preoccupied: unresponsive heart
• Fruitless: uncultivated heart
• Self-centered: unloving heart
• Doomed: unbiblical heart

Healthy heart

The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart. (Luke 8:15)

Trust in the LORD with all your heart… Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 3:5; 4:23)

Give me an undivided heart. (Ps 86:11)

Spiritual fitness

We are spiritually fit when we are close to God and resistant to evil.

But he gives us more grace... Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. (James 4:6-8)

Spiritual fitness testing

• Are you desiring God more and more?
• Are you resisting devil, world, and flesh?
• Are you loving and caring toward others?
• Are you willing and able to forgive?
• Are you heavenly minded?
• Are you faithful in Bible intake, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines?

 

Feeding on 
God’s Word

• Read
• Memorize
• Meditate
• Listen
• Apply
• Write

Healthy 
prayer patterns

Pray alone.
Pray with others.

Pray on the spot.
Pray on a schedule.

Pray from your heart.
Pray with a guide.

Guides for prayer

• The Lord’s Prayer
• A. C. T. S.
• Pray the Bible
• Pray like children

Take a break

• Rest: break from busyness
• Solitude: break from people
• Silence: break from noise
• Secrecy: break from publicity
• Fasting: break from food
• Submission: break from control
• Sacrifice: break from plenty

Total Fitness 
Training

• Spiritual
• Physical
• Financial
• Intellectual
• Emotional
• Relational
• Vocational

Are you listening?

Now then, my sons, listen to me; 
blessed are those who keep my ways. 
Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me… For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the LORD. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:32-36)