In my last devotional we briefly journeyed through the ‘how-to’ discern God’s voice or His frequency. We discovered that God directly communicates to us and He will use different vehicles to commandeer our attention. With that said, the next step after we have heard God speak is to obey and as Charles Stanley says, “Leave the consequences to Him.” Now then, after Samuel obeyed Eli and he responded to God’s calling it also signified that he began to listen(I Samuel 3:10). The Hebrew word for “listening” is shama, which carries the meaning of “to obey”. Let’s be honest today and hold ourselves accountable; it’s not enough to just hear what God says. We have a greater response-ability than to just recognize God’s voice, we must also be willing to obey Him when He speaks. But, sometimes we hear and don’t do! Am I the only one that have occasionally (to put it mildly) missed the mark by hearing God and then not listening to what he has told me to do?? Jesus said, “Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:28; emphasis added). And when we do, we are delighting our Father’s heart with our obedience (1 Samuel 15:22). On the flip side of this coin, in the book of James 1:22 we also learned that if we only ‘read’ God’s word and not ‘live’ God’s word we are only deceiving ourselves! Oftentimes, people get frustrated with God when He disconnects the spiritual modem and WiFi connections. But, in most cases, He typically does this because he is waiting for us to first obey Him on what He has already told us to do, before He tells us our path forward and establishes our next step. Look at it from this perspective; if we only hear God and not obey God when He speaks, why would He continue to speak to us if we fail to act on what He has already told us to do! I’ve heard it said, “Until God opens the door, praise Him in the hallway.” Well, this sounds good but before you start praising in the hallway, first inventory your obedience. If the door you just left is still open and not closed perhaps you may need to retrace your steps because you might not have done something you were supposed to do. Revelation 3:7-8 says, “God open doors no one can shut and shuts doors no one can open!” If I may, let me rephrase the above popular axiom: “Until God opens the next door, make sure the one you just walked out of is closed and then praise Him in hallway!”