Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found;

       surely in a flood of great waters they shall not reach him (Psalm 32:6).

 

There is often a tendency in Christians not to really seek the Lord until we get into a crisis situation. Then we seek Him earnestly. We see this same pattern with Israel in the Old Testament. This is a primary reason why many stay in a seemingly perpetual state of crisis. As we are told in Matthew 7:21-27:

 

       "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven;

       but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.
 

       "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in Your name,

       and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'

       "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'

       "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them,

       may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.
 

       "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house;

       and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.
 

       "And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them,

       will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand.
 

       "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,

       and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall."

 

As we read here, just calling Jesus Lord does not guarantee that we will enter the kingdom of heaven. We must do His will. To call Him Lord and not do what He says disqualifies us from being believers, and makes us obvious unbelievers. How could we really know the glorious King of kings and not do what He says? To know that He is God and not obey Him is an ultimate delusion. This delusion leads to many tragedies and failures when the floods of life come.

 

One of our ultimate quests should therefore be to hear the words of the Lord. As we are told in John 10:4: "When he (the good Shepherd) puts forth all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice." The obvious counterpoint here is that if we do not know His voice we will not follow Him. However, hearing His words and obeying them are two different things. Many glory in how well they hear the Lord, but they do not do what He says. We must count His words as the unfathomable treasures that they are. When the Lord gives us direction we should write it in a journal, reviewing it often to see how we have complied with our King's directives.

 

If you are in confusion about how to hear from the Lord, go back and review the things that you know He has directed you to do. These are things like prayer, reading the Bible, fellowship, etc., all of which are directives that are clearly given to us in Scripture. As we obey these we will begin walking in the light, and the light will make our paths, and His voice, increasingly clear. As we are told in Proverbs 4:18:

 

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.

 

If we are on the right road, things should be getting brighter. If we are on the wrong road, things will be getting darker and more confused. If our path is not getting brighter and clearer every day, then we have departed from the right path somewhere. In the Lord the wrong path never turns into the right path. The only way for us to get back on the right path is to go back to the point where we made the wrong turn. That is called repentance.

 

Repentance is not only a good thing—it is one of the greatest Christian truths. In Christ we can actually go back to where we made a mistake and start over and get it right. In Acts 11:18 we read the response of the Jewish believers after hearing Peter's testimony about going to the house of Cornelius: "And when they heard this, they quieted down, and glorified God, saying, 'Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.'" Eight of the most powerful words in Scripture are found in this verse: "God has granted . . . the repentance that leads to life." Repentance is a special grace that God grants, and it leads to life.