Hear + Act: Learning in 2024
There is an art to learning from your Word of the Year. It's art of combining hearing and doing - putting your Word into action. Here is where to begin.
A famous passage in the Old Testament is one many Jews still recite daily - morning and evening. It was a command from Moses to the people of Israel as they were leaving Egypt, wandering the wilderness, and preparing to enter into the land long promised to them.
It’s called “the Shema” and it says:
“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
-Deuteronomy 6:4-9
In the New Testament, the heart of the Shema is found when a scholar answers Jesus’ (and his own) question about how to live forever.
“He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” -Luke 10:27
This leads Jesus into the parable of the Good Samaritan (to answer the scholar’s follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?”). At the heart of this story, is the question,
“What does it mean to obey God?”
And the reason obedience is so important goes back to the Shema passage in Deuteronomy. The very first word of the passage, in English, means to listen or to hear. Moses, speaking for God, is commanding the people to listen. What is more interesting is the double meaning of the word Shema which gets us back to the question of the scholar for Jesus.
In Hebrew, there is no word for obey because to listen or to hear means to obey. In other words, you can’t obey without hearing, and if you hear you are expected to obey. There is no difference between listening and obeying. They are tied together forever in the Hebrew language.
Hearing God for your Word of the Year
This year, as you focus on one Word for all of 2024, you are going to hear God. I have no doubt, that if you spend the entire year seeking God about your word, you will hear him. However, I do wonder if you will tie together listening and obeying. Will you DO what God speaks?
The key to learning, truly learning, from your Word in 2024 will be actively connecting hearing with doing. However, some of you may be saying to yourself, “I’m ready to act, but how do I hear God?”
I’ve shared how to hear God before, but today, I’m going to give you four ways anyone can hear God. If this is new to you, I encourage you to start slowly. Choose one or two of these four and dive deep to see what it means to hear God in that way. As you become more comfortable, add another to your toolbox of hearing God.
Here are all four ways to hear God:
Read Scripture.
Pray to God.
Biblically Meditate.
Contemplate Culture and Creation.
Now, let me dive deeper and give an example of how each has been used to hear God about the Word of the Year over the last decade or so.
Read
The Bible is a collection of multiple authors inspired by God to write and collect his story over more than two thousand years. As Christians, we see these writings not just as good, moral instruction but as the actual words of God.
Therefore, when we read the Bible, we can expect to hear God speak into our lives today. There is a lot of nuance to what we read in the Bible, so I encourage you to read this article to help you better understand the Bible. It will help bring clarity to what you read.
In addition to that information, when you read Scripture this year, keep your Word in the back of your mind. Do see your Word in the pages of Scripture? I admit, that some words are much easier than others to see. Last year, my word was PEACE. I saw that all over the Bible. A few years ago, my Word was STRIDE, and I had to look a little closer.
What is important, is knowing what to do when you find a link to your Word in the Bible.
In 2017, my Word was RESTORE. One of the Bible verses I read that year was out of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah wrote to the people of Israel long after the nation had been established. As a nation, they had strayed from the commands of God, so destruction was coming. The core issue God had with them was while they did and said the right things, their hearts weren’t really in their words and actions.
Isaiah foretold destruction but also restoration. He said:
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again. -Isaiah 58:12 MSG
For me, this became a picture not just of what God wanted to do in my life, but what God wanted to do through me in the lives of those who I interact with. Through Scripture, I saw God using me to help rebuild, restore, and renew the lives of those around me.
It’s one of the reasons I writing this today.
As you read scripture, where do you see God speaking to you about your Word? What are you supposed to do about it?
Pray
Prayer is a beautiful practice because it is not a one-way form of communication. We get to speak to God, but we also can listen to what he says to us. The mistake we most often make is we don’t do the second part. We do a great job of telling God a lot of things, but we don’t pause to hear what he has to say about those thoughts.
But what does it sound like when God speaks?
The best description I have is either a ‘still, small voice’ or a ‘loud thought’. Another way of putting it is a surprising thought that pops into your head, but also one you cannot seem to shake.
When God speaks, it sticks with you.
My wife, Kia’s 2024 Word of the Year is VOICE. She was praying one day, and she asked God about all the different ways she uses her ‘voice’ - photography, social media, podcasting, and online church. She was quiet for a moment, and she heard him speak back: “You need to give me your voice.”
Just as I had to decide to write today to rebuild, renew, and restore, Kia had to choose to give her voice to God. It’s never easy to give something to God. It takes MY thing out of MY control and into his. And while I know God will do infinitely better than I would, it still is a hard choice.
As you talk to God this year, listen for him to speak to your concerns.
What is he asking from you?
Meditation
I began the practice of Biblical meditation in 2023, so this is still new for me. The key difference between Biblical meditation and other forms of meditation is instead of emptying my mind, I focus my mind on Scriptural concepts, themes, and ideas.
I learned the process I use from author Jon Eldridge, and I begin by saying, “Father, I choose you.” Then I work through my mind what it means to choose God the Father. Then I say, “Jesus, I choose you.” Again, I process what it means to choose Jesus. Finally, I say, “Holy Spirit, I choose you,” and I walk through how I will choose the Holy Spirit.
After I work through those things, I will meditate or focus my mind on my Word of the Year, a Scripture verse or principle I read that day, or other things God is showing me.
Last year, my Word was PEACE. I knew that Jesus had promised me peace. I also knew that I could ask for peace at any time. I began to understand though that it was up to me to step into the peace I was promised and prayed for.
So in times of meditation, I saw myself step into peace as if I was taking a step into a puddle of water. The peace would then begin to saturate my body - from my feet to the top of my head. The days I meditated were more peaceful — even in the face of outward chaos and anxiety.
This peace wasn’t limited to me. Kia told me it was evident to her that as I practiced meditation in our kitchen each morning, our family was forced to walk through this spirit of peace as they began their day.
As you spend time with God this year, add meditation to your spiritual disciplines.
Meditate on your word and see how God will use this in your life.
What do you see as you meditate on your Word?
Contemplation
A few years ago, if you would have asked me the difference between meditation and contemplation from a spiritual perspective, I couldn’t have told you. Through the teaching of Pete Greig, I realized there is an important difference between these two spiritual practices.
Contemplation is hearing or seeing God in creation and culture.
As I learned about contemplation, I realized I naturally engage in contemplation. In fact, outside of Scripture, contemplation is the way I most often heard God concerning my Word of the Year.
2011 was the first year I undertook the Word of the Year project. I chose the Word FREEDOM, and I seemed to see my Word everywhere. One of the most memorable was a YouTube video of a BMX bike rider — Danny MacAskill.
You can follow the link to the video to watch for yourself, but what I saw in his video was a picture of what I wanted in my life. I saw him doing his BMX stunts in the wide open open spaces of Scotland. It became a picture of the FREEDOM God had for me.
I wanted to be able to use my gifts and talents in the spaces God would open up to me.
Contemplation is simply paying attention, making note of what you see, and beginning to put it into practice. That year, I wrote every single day. I put into practice what I saw by building my gift of writing. Along with other lessons put into practice that year, it moved me into the place of freedom I saw in that video.
As you spend time watching videos, listening to music, and walking in nature keep your eyes and ears open to hear God.
What have you seen already this year?
Now Obey
The book of James tells us:
“But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.” -James 1:22 NLT
James goes on to tell us it’s not just listening and obedience that are important to God, but faith itself is found in the act of doing. I assume you have heard or will soon hear God speak to you about your 2024 Word. As you act on what you hear, you will also build the belief that God will work in you and your Word.
So let me give you a quick tip on the action part of your Word.
In his book, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon describes his work area setup. He has a desk set up for digital work with a computer, tablet, phone, etc, but directly behind it, he created a “physical” desk. On this desk are supplies like pens, scissors, knives, markers, and much more.
It is important to Kleon to create with more than just his mind. Physical action is a vital part of putting the vision in his head into its final form.
When it comes to your Word of the Year, there is an important parallel to how Kleon works and how we learn from our Word. The more active we are with our Word, the more we learn.
So how can you practically put your Word into physical action? All of us have some sort of hobby - gardening, carpentry, cooking, sewing, drawing, etc. How can you harness this energy and apply it to your Word of the Year?
About a decade ago, I began screen printing t-shirts as a hobby (well, I briefly made it into a business. But that’s another story). For multiple years, I’ve used this hobby to put my Word of the Year into action. I designed, screened, and printed t-shirts around my Word.
No matter how you do it, I challenge you to become a hearer and doer of what God shows you about your Word in 2024. It’s how we learn what God is desperate to show us.
Writing Playlist
I don’t know if we have the same taste in music, but here are some songs to explore. All the links go to Spotify. While writing this post, this is some of what I was listening to:
Made for More - Josh Baldwin, Jenn Johnson
He Who is to Come - Passion
Water - Kanye West, Ant Clemons