He Who Has an Ear

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

HE WHO HAS AN EAR

Prov 17:4

4 A wicked man listens to evil lips; a liar pays attention to a malicious tongue.

NIV

There certainly are a lot of voices out there that are doing their best to entice us to do things which are not pleasing to God. Surely in our society today we are bombarded with various voice of s sensual nature, the movies, the television, magazines, billboards, even catalogs mailed to us, everywhere we turn it is there. But we also are bombarded in a far more subtle way in other areas which are just as evil for us to listen to. The world would speak with evil lips that we need to trust in our own abilities, rather than God. There are those who would speak those evil words about storing up wealth for our own pleasures of life, rather than doing what God desires of us. There are lips which speak gossip which we should tell to be quite rather than listen with tingling ears. The temptations are only temptations if we are interested in all in them. At the core of all temptations is lust, not just in the sensual sense but in every aspect of our lives, lust for thing, lust for money, and lust for fame, to be somebody special, to be lifted up, to be thought of as a scholar, or a learned person in the scriptures, to have a fancy title. The list of things we can lust for is extensive and they all come from evil lips, and are of a malicious tongue, the tongue of Satan. We should be listening only to the lips of the Holy Spirit, and pay absolutely no attention to the voice of the evil one. Yet he continues to whisper in our ears those things which would lead us in the wrong direction away from God. God has given us the gift of discernment so that we will know what voice is speaking to us, what lips are moving, whether they are liars or are the truth of God. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to us.