Recently members of TKC attended a Prayer School led by Brian Zahnd. Brian, pastor of Word of Life Church for 44 years at this time, had developed for himself a life devoted to prayer in which he guides others to follow a similar path. It was a time a of deep reflection as we considered the ways that we communicate to God and the types of prayers that we pray. Our time was thought provoking, challenging, encouraging, and above all, an invitation to go deeper in devotion to time with the Lord in order that Christ may be continually from within us. If we understand that prayer is communication between ourselves and an incredibly close, yet powerfully sovereign and omniscient God, we can then see that we have been invited into something other-worldly. Something sacred, something quite divine.
God has not held any part of heaven back from us. We ache, we toil, we lament, we ignore, we justify, we point, and we often choose what we want to believe from Jesus. At the same time we tend to ignore that God himself in the man Jesus, something he didn’t have to do, yet his hands of mercy and grace are stretched wide to those who will receive this truth.
As Zahnd pointed out, Christianity is a received faith, meaning our acknowledgment of who Christ is hinges on when we let self ends and Christ begin to form within us. Whenever or for whatever reason we have decided to follow Jesus, it has come from realizing something was needed that we did not have. Whether we came to first know him as savior, healer, provider, strong tower, joy, or peacemaker, he is the one who had what we didn’t. He has what we need, what we long for, and he has freely given it to us. It’s up to us to receive it and allow him to form it within us. All the beauty of heaven formed and revealed in the man Jesus Christ.
Today his is still the one who is offering us the same keys to heaven in our hearts. There still seems to be wrestle for us to not necessarily acknowledge him, but to fully believe this, to receive this, and to stay humble under the teachings of Jesus. To abide.
What’s the issue, why do we struggle this way?
For each of us, it may be a different, but most times it comes down to pride. Pride is a beast that divides us, and more tragically, hinders us from truly understanding what God want’s to rid us of and form within us.
The words hearing and listening may sound somewhat similar in plain English, however they are distinctly different processes. Hearing is primarily about gaining information for oneself, while listening is an empathetic act of caring for others. When listening, the focus is on understanding the other person’s feelings and emotional state, rather than on one’s own reaction to the conversation.[1]. All the way back to Genesis 3, we see the shepherding heart of God expressed in the way he still cared for Adam and Eve despite their decisions.
Although we still repeat this pattern of waywardness from faithfulness to God, he has always provided a way of redemption and restoration for us, the God of our own exodus. First though. we need to be retaught.
We have beliefs, we have hurts and pains, we have lies that have formed the way we see our world and each other. God knows the mess of our minds and hearts yet has given us a pathway to get from the slavery of our old lives into the life-giving truths of heaven right here and now.
People are often poor listeners, frequently becoming distracted or thinking about what they want to say next instead of fully engaging with what they’re hearing. Research suggests that while people have good hearing, they lack the necessary skills to listen effectively.[2]
He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “’they may be ever seeing but never perceiving and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven!’”
This statement in Mark 4 reveals that Jesus would teach in a way that guards the treasures of heaven’s truths from those who still have pride in their hearts, yet is fully revealed to those who come in humility and true repentance.
Much of Brian Zahnd’s teachings on prayer were formed with a liturgical structure, a structure that in Protestant Christianity is somewhat uncommon. Interestingly, God himself gave the Israelites the same kind of structure as they were being shepherded to devotion to Yahweh after their Exodus from Egypt. 400 years under the ruling of the Egyptians formed within them false beliefs on not only who they were, how to treat one another, and even more so, who to worship.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word shamaʿ (שָׁמַע) covers both "hear" and "listen/hearken”, but the context of when it’s used determines whether it’s passive or active. The Lord guided the Israelites minds and hearts through prayer as Deuteronomy’s Shema (Deut. 6:4–5) models attentive, heart-level listening that produces love and obedience. The Lord, the one who formed us, knows us well enough to know that what we focus on is what will be formed within us, and gave the Israelites tangible truths to pray, to reflect on, to be formed by in order that they may experience within their hearts the freedom that they had been longing for.
Notably, Jesus reveals that we can hear, but not listen, we can see, but not understand. When we choose to harden our hearts to the redemption God’s desires to form from the inside of us out, we can find ourselves wandering, confused in our faith, trampling the testimony of Jesus the Christ in our lives. The call to not nearly hear but express our listening through faithful obedience is found throughout the scriptures. In the Hebrew Bible, or our version of the Old Testament, the words translated as “to listen” or to harken or even listen intently are found over 1100 times. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, it’s found over 1200 times alone.
As it often is with Hebrew and Greek, there are many more words for both hearing and listening that simply our two words in English, however the theme we see God repeating is a response to covenant faithfulness that begins with a willingness to be retaught a better way to live, a willingness to follow and to be obedient to a God who is much wiser than we are. In Deut. 6 (the Shema) ties hearing/listening to covenant loyalty: hearing God’s word results in loving God with heart, soul, strength — integral to identity and practice and Jesus repeats this pattern in Matthew 6 as he teaches his disciples to pray in a way that reminds that of the covenant keeping God who still desires to work within his children to bring forth the kingdom of heaven into the Earth.
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” These are the words of our savior, our king, our redeemer. To listen is to obey, to follow, to trust. It’s far more than simply hearing. To listen is to respond, to act, to provide evidence of our belief through the way we live our lives.
Let us consider today what we may have heard but not yet truly listened. Let us take heed and harken the call of God today in our lives. Let us trust the one who knows us better than we do and step into fateful obedience, often repeating again the powerful truths of God’s word in our lives until Christ himself is revealed in us, on Earth as it is in Heaven to the praise and glory of God’s name. Amen
[1] Wright, H. Norman. 2011. The Complete Guide to Crisis & Trauma Counseling: What to Do and Say When It Matters Most!. Ventura, CA: Regal.
[2] Mowry, Bill. 2025. Holding the Word: Five Ways to Encounter God through the Scriptures. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
If this is you and you’re sensing there’s more you may be missing due to resistance to authenticity before the Lord, here are some follow up questions to consider.
1. In what ways does our capacity to “hear” the truths of the gospel fall short of truly “listening,” and what practices (liturgical, communal, or personal) would most effectively allow Christ to be formed in us from the inside out?
2. If Christianity is a received faith that requires the ending of self and the beginning of Christ within us, how does pride specifically obstruct that formation, and what biblical rhythms of repentance and obedience most reliably dismantle it?
3. The Shema ties listening to covenant loyalty — how should the covenantal language of Deut. 6 reshape our understanding of prayer so that it moves from information-supply to heart-level transformation and faithful action in daily life?
