For the past week or more, I have been asking God for what I should cut out in my Internet

usage in
order to have more time to use my best abilities. For example, there are Bible studies I started last year
that I have not completed, so should I give up receiving some of the daily prayer requests e-mails or some
of the daily devotionals. Already, I am not able to keep up with the latter. Well, last weekend God
answered in an unexpected way during a sermon in German of which I didn’t hear a lot of the translation.
(The translator had a very soft voice and I didn’t have my hearing aid. But the Holy Spirit told me that
during my Internet ministry time, I was to not to watch the daytime CNN and a German hour series
anymore. Instead I was to listen to Rejoice Radio via the Internet. He said that I was focusing too much
on secular news and that I could have enough information to intercessory pray in response to via the
certain news websites I have mentioned to you previously. Also, the Holy Spirit said that most of the
content of the daytime TV was affecting my spiritual focus and even energy because of its negativism etc.
I was reminded that the best spiritual 7 years with my family were without a TV and during my two 5-
month Christian curriculum writing times in Tennessee were the best spiritual times in my life.

So I made a commitment to change my TV habits. It seemed that I was rewarded soon after. I was
sharing with a group of Christians some my observations of current Christian outreach methods and their
affect in various parts of the world. I also shared my concerns about what I believe are misleadings by
many Christian leaders in the USA and their possible affects when things get tougher. Then a Spanish
lady said that she was so confused about most of what she has heard preached and told her. Tears came
to her eyes. (Her husband had earlier told me in private that he also had become very spiritually
confused and decided that he had to read the whole Bible for himself.) The Holy Spirit had me share to
his wife that she needed to read the Bible for herself while thinking as Proverbs 3:5-6 says. I gave her a
copy of the "Wonderful Children of God" Bible study tool in German. I showed her the part that is
Scripture about who we are in Christ. She was so happy. I told her what her husband of 7 years had
said. I said a prayer for them to study the Bible together in the way I had suggested and expect
wonderful understanding of God's wonderful truths. Later, the husband said that they have had a rocky
marriage. I briefly told him about agapè and Ephesians 5. He got excited and wrote down the latter and
said he would read it. I told him to go for having an Ephesians 5 marriage. The Holy Spirit is sure a
wonderful guide!!

Then in the Sunday morning church the following essay (translated into English by my wife) was in the
church bulletin:

How to develop an ear for God

(from Daily with the King by W. Glyn Evans)

I pray, that God makes me a good listener. In this I should understand, that God does not speak in the
storm or fire to me, but by His soft, still voice (1 Kings 19:9-12). This is another expression for the fact,
that God does not speak to me through circumstances or persons, except there is already an inner
confirmation or clarity. The old priest Eli was wise enough to know, that God’s will for Samuel, his
helper, had to come directly from God: “Speak, for your servant is listening!” (1 Samuel 3:9)

Our modern, complex life is an arc-enemy of listening. The result of that complexity is putting to pieces,
superficiality and the inability to concentrate or go deeper in any area of life. Satan is the happiest
benefiting of our age of technology and it pleases him, to beat us forward, backward like a handball. I
must resist him by deciding willfully for the essentials and letting go of nerve killing activities that will
make me ineffective.

How can I learn to be a good listener to God? I should start by giving Him time and attention. That is the
critical part of the fight. I have to resist the enticing calls, that want to suggest to me, that I have to all to
all and I should just simply concentrate on God.

As next I should develop a feeling of reverence and respect for God, which is a very natural preparation
for being silent, which again is essential for the right way of listening. When I develop an ear for God, I
will hear Him even in the midst of a big crowd and will like brother Lawrence says, “go forward even in
the midst of sleep.”

To listen to God is hard to master, but it will supercede my highest expectations. He says: “Listen to Me
and eat the good, and your soul will get fed of the fat!” (Isaiah 55:2) God knows, that listening is only
the first step of a process, that ends in my eternal well-being.

Habakkuk 2:1 “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He
will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.”

Now, look at Philippians 4:4-8 and tell me what you think of in relation to the above and your use of time.