Then Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” And he said, “Here I am.”

We as human beings have a problem with our hearing. In other words, we hear what we want to hear. Wives often think that their husbands have selective hearing. The husband hears only certain things his wife says. Children also have selective hearing. They can hear you silently scoop ice cream, but they cannot hear you tell them to do their chores.

The problem does not lie in our ability to hear; the problem is our ability to listen. What is the difference? To hear is to perceive it with the ear. To listen is to pay attention to what our ear perceives. We can hear something yet never pay attention to it. If you have ever lived in the city, you can identify with the following illustration. I recall living in an apartment building fifty yards from the railroad tracks and directly under the approach to an airport runway. The noise was constant. For the first few weeks, we noticed the sound, and it kept us awake at night. By the time we moved from the apartment two years later, we never noticed the sounds. We heard them, but we stopped paying attention to them because the sounds were familiar.

Unfortunately, we as believers can become inattentive to our Lord. We can be familiar with the Bible, yet we can miss the Lord’s voice to us. When our Lord speaks, we do not hear Him. Our text describes a situation in which a man heard the voice of the Lord, but he wasn’t listening. So, the Lord spoke to a teenager to get the man’s attention. The message God gave to the teenager to give to the man was an ominous message; it was a message none of us would want to receive. The man was not paying attention to the Lord, so the Lord used drastic measures to get his attention. What is the truth that we can take from 1 Samuel 3? You must listen to God’s voice.

What are your thoughts on this verse?

Can you hear the voice of God today?  If so, how?  If not, why not?

What are evidences that you listen for God?

Are you too busy to hear God?