Have you ever taken a moment to breathe easy and suddenly heard the birds chirping, only to realize that they were chirping along? There are sounds all around us that are clearly audible, but we often fail to hear because we are mentally and emotionally preoccupied. Those who live by airports or railroad tracks will tell you that sometimes they don’t even realize a train has gone by or a plane has flown over. Their ear has tuned out the background noise in order to hear the sounds in their immediate environment. Have you ever had the experience of having something go wrong and then saying, “Something told me I should not have done that” or “I should have followed my first thought?” Unfortunately, we usually say that in retrospect, after we have ignored the voice in our head that said, “stop,” “wait,” or “don’t do that.” I believe many prisoners have sat in jail or prison cells and said, “why didn’t I listen to the voice inside my own head?”
Try listening more to the background noises around you like the traffic going by, or the dog barking down the street, the birds singing, or the water dripping in the sink. Then try listening to the thoughts that play repeatedly in your head. I believe some of us have been so overwhelmed or busy in life that we don’t realize that every thought occurs like a voice in our heads. Often it is our unconscious thoughts that speak the loudest in our lives, like the low flying plane overhead, or the nearby train going by. Many times, they are not even our own thoughts that are controlling us, but the voices of someone.
If we discipline our ears to hear the voices from within, we may be surprised at the recordings of things said to us long ago. Sometimes these are things that we heard and lived by, but found out later, we don’t really believe. If we are going to be successful in overcoming differences in relationships, business, politics, religion, and throughout our world we must tune-in to the background voices that we have tune-out. Whether we have gone deaf out of fear, pain, or busyness, we need disciplined ears to hear in order to progress. In fact, the most creative and productive people in the arts, in entertainment, the sciences, etc., have listened to voices that others tuned-out and have made great contributions to our progress in the world. If we are going to be disciplined for success, we must have a disciplined ear to hear the heart of the matter in all relationships and all endeavors, and ultimately, we must listen for the voice of God.