The 5 Laws of Hearing
Did you know that there is a Law of Hearing? Better yet, did you know that that one Law breaks down into five different components? Since the Kingdom of God is voice activated, it would behoove us to understand the Laws of Hearing since what we hear denotes what we speak, and what we speak denotes what we see.
Below are the five Laws of Hearing, and we’ll break them down line by line, precept by precept, starting with the first law: The Law of Continuous Hearing.
The Law of Continuous Hearing
The Law of Interpretation
The Law of Incubation
The Law of Proximity
The Law of Frequencies
1. The Law of Continuous Hearing
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
The apostle Paul taught us that faith comes by hearing. He did not say that it comes by what you heard; neither did he say that it comes by what you will hear. He said it comes by hearing. The conjugation of the word hearing denotes the continuous present. You have done it, and you are doing it, and you are continuing to do it.
Don’t zero in so much here on the word faith. I most certainly want you to hear faith - which indeed comes by the Word of God - and to keep on hearing it. However, the focus in this Law is how faith comes; not faith itself. Therefore, since all spiritual laws or principles are neutral, meaning they work for the Kingdom of God as well as the Kingdom of Darkness, then fear can come by hearing. Lust can come by hearing. Violence can come by hearing. Whatever is in your atmosphere; whatever you are putting into your atmosphere; whatever you are not rebuking, rejecting, evicting, and cancelling from your atmosphere, is precisely what will manifest in your atmosphere.
ATMOSPHERE >> THOUGHTS >> FEELINGS >> SPOKEN WORDS >> ATMOSPHERE
Your atmosphere affects your thoughts.
Your thoughts affect your feelings.
Your feelings affect your words.
Your words affect your atmosphere.
Don’t like your atmosphere? Examine the words going into it and who is speaking them. Now let’s examine Law number two.
2. The Law of Interpretation
“Therefore take heed how you hear. For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken from him.” (Luke 8:18)
“Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.” (Revelation 3:3)
The Law of Continuous Hearing is our foundation of the Law of Hearing in general. What we hear is important. However, how we hear what we hear can and often is the distinguishing factor between whether or not the Word you heard comes to fruition.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the disciples to be careful how they hear and then paired it with the Law of Stewardship: the more you have, the more you get. The less you have, the less you get. To understand that better, you must turn to the Parable of the Talents in the Gospels. Again, in the Book of Revelation, Jesus tells the Dead Church of Sardis via John to hold fast to how they received and heard. And then He gives a warning comparable to the Law of Stewardship: that if you don’t watch, He’d fall on them as a thief. Being caught by the Lord unawares could most certainly be the difference between gaining your life or losing it.
How you hear what you hear is important.
Not hearing properly can cause an argument in a relationship. If you did not hear your spouse when they said something or when you felt they should have said something, is likely fodder for an argument. If your spouse says something that you internalize in an unhealthy fashion (e.g. through the lens of rejection), then you can create a problem where there is none, or make a mountain out of a molehill.
If you are actively listening, yet your hearing itself is impaired, you are going to hear things in a muffled fashion, or some things you may miss entirely.
How we hear the Word of the Lord - the written Word, the prophetic Word - is an imperative part of allowing it to manifest. Next is the Law of Incubation.
3. The Law of Incubation
For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. (Hebrews 4:2)
But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:16-17)
The Law of Incubation is similar to the Law of Interpretation. Interpretation deals with how you hear the Word, while incubation deals with how you internalize the Word you heard. So at this point, you are continuously hearing the Word. You have (hopefully), filtered [interpreted] the Word well. Now, it’s time to incubate or gestate the Word. You could also call this the stage of germination. We see a picture of this in the Parable of the Sower in the Gospels.
“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”
…. And He said to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.” (Mark 4:3-20)
So we see the Word of God going out in the form of a seed. The hearts of men are likened to soil. The first seed that went out didn’t even get a chance to hit the ground well before birds representing Satan swooped down on it. The second seed fell on stony ground and wasn’t able to penetrate either. These are those who have no depth in the Word; no roots. The third seed falls on the ground and, indeed, takes root, but is choked by thorns and thistles that represent the cares of life. Finally, the fourth seed falls on good, well prepared ground, springs up in due season, and yields a harvest of thirty, sixty, then one hundredfold!
I had the pleasure of attending Embassy International Worship Center pastored by the phenomenal Apostle Bryan Meadows this past Sunday. And in his sermon, he stated:
It is the presence of God that germinates prophetic words.
Now, compare this to Jesus’ parable. What is the condition of your soil? What is the condition of your soul? Is it charged by the presence of God or is it filled with the presence of something else? Are the words spoken in your environment conducive to what you’re trying to grow there? What fruit is growing on your vines? Is it the fruit of repentance? The fruit of the Spirit? Or are you diseased like the fig tree Jesus cursed?
Jesus actually didn’t cause the curse on the tree. Rather, He recognized what was there, and accelerated it, so that we would see the end result the tree was already headed toward. If Jesus were passing you by, would He see leaves, but no fruit? Would He see a form of godliness, but no power? Would He see the Word, but no works to match the Word? Would He see anything at all?
How are you incubating what you heard? Did you cast off or cancel what you heard in the last Law of Hearing? Did your broken filter cause you to throw out what should have taken root? Or did the Word make it past your filter, but get cut off at the moment of would-be conception? Or did you conceive, but not create an appropriate environment for the Word to germinate or continue germinating?
Let’s briefly revisit, the first Law of Hearing. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So if your spirit-man is pregnant with the Word of God, in order to receive, conceive, and incubate the Word properly, carrying it to full term, then you must be continuously hearing the Word; continuously speaking the Word. This is the only way your fruit comes to fruition in the fullness of its time.
In the Book of Hebrews, 4:2, the writer believed to be Paul states that the Word being mixed with faith did not profit the Children of Israel in the wilderness because they did not mix it with faith; they did not receive it. You cannot receive what you don’t have the faith to believe. Again, in Romans 10, Paul addresses this error in stating that the Israelites did not receive the Gospel because they did not have the faith to believe it. “Who has believed our report?” the prophet Isaiah asked. Not many of them, apparently. This is why the Jews were rejected for a time, and the Gospel came to the Gentiles. Christ came to His own and they did not receive Him, so He found a remnant who was outside of the covenant, and purchased our entry with His blood, giving us the opportunity to become sons of God by faith (Gal. 3:26)!
4. The Law of Proximity
“Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. (John 12:27-30)
John 12 presents us with a very interesting passage. In it, the Lord of Glory speaks in a thunderous voice from the Heavens. He did not come down Himself, but His voice did. Jesus heard His voice perfectly, and what It said. Nearby was a group of two types of people. Neither group heard what Jesus did; they did not hear a Voice. The first group argued that they had heard thunder. The second group argued that an angel had spoken to Jesus. How can this be? All of the people were in the same place, and God spoke in the presence of them all. The differentiation was not on God’s part, but rather on the people’s part.
Jesus was fully God and fully man, and as such, He was in perfect union with the Father in Heaven. This is why He could say that He did nothing but what the Father does, and said nothing but what the Father says.
Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel…. that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. (John 5:19-20, 23)
Jesus was in perfect union with the Father. Another way of saying this is that He was in close proximity to His Father. Jesus was in the closest proximity to the Father, even as a man. Thus, He was able to hear the Father clearly. Throughout Scripture in both Testaments, the voice of the Father is likened to thunder. The sheer magnitude of the Voice sounded like thunder. His voice thunders from Heaven. But hearing the Voice in the thunder, or rather the Voice that was like thunder, only comes through close proximity.
Now, obviously, Jesus was just as close to (or far from) the Father as the other people He was standing with from a measurable, geographic standpoint. Jesus and His associates had feet that were firmly planted on the earth. He was not floating around the sky (first Heaven) or the second Heaven (atmosphere). So the people with Him COULD HAVE heard the Voice in the thunder. But their relationship to God or the lack thereof determined what they heard. The distance of the spirit-man from God determined what the physical-man heard.
So we see one group of people who indeed heard a Voice in the thunder. However, they attributed it to being the voice of an angel. This is pretty darn decent! I mean, they HEARD a Heavenly voice! Many people will go through life never hearing an angel speak to them; certainly not one who is yet in Heaven! However, their proximity to God was not as close as Jesus, so they believed it was an angel; they didn’t realise that God the Father was speaking Himself.
Next, we see a group of people who insisted that what they heard was thunder. They heard the sound of Heaven, they knew something was afoot, but they did not have a way to understand, translate, or decipher what they heard. Their proximity to Heaven was not great.
Yet there’s a group here that’s not mentioned. I can assure you that somewhere in the mix, there were people nearby who heard absolutely nothing. No voice of the Father. No voice of a supposed angel. No thunder. No nothing. These are those who were either entirely out of relationship, or were too spiritually numb for their ears - spiritual or physical - to pick up what God was saying in any form. Their proximity was distant or perhaps, non-existent. And hearing the accounts of their family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers was likely an interesting situation.
“You’re telling me you heard what??” You heard the God of Heaven who sits on the circle of the earth speak to you?” “You heard an angel who stands in the presence of the Father speak to you?” “You heard thunder from above our clouds, issuing from the highest Heaven?” YEAH RIGHT.
James 4:8 says that if you draw near to God, He will draw near to you. The closer you draw to Him, the better you will be able to hear Him. This brings us to our final Law of Hearing.
5. The Law of Frequencies
This final Law builds strongly on the Law of Proximity. When you are closer to God, you can hear Him better. And in the Law of Frequencies, not only do you hear God better, but you hear Him more frequently and in a way that others on a lower frequency do not. Frequency is related to pitch: the more increased the sound waves, the higher the pitch will go; the less increased the sound waves, the lower the pitch will go.
God does not only call us closer to Him, but He calls us higher in Him. God only came down to our level once - when He took on the unglorified form of a man. But even that was just His method of showing us - not just telling us - how to go higher in Him. He lived, He died, He rose again, He conquered, then He ascended. He hasn’t come down since, and He never will. Therefore, we must come up to Him.
Picture someone in a swimming pool or a body of water with a lifeguard nearby. In order to best hear what the lifeguard is saying, you must swim closer to them. But even in a body of water full of people, full of activity, it can be difficult to hear them. So you must climb up and out of the water and walk toward them in order to hear them the best.
Only certain people hear certain frequencies. There are whistles that are made for dogs. Human beings can’t hear hear them, but kanines can because of the way God designed their ears; they can pick up the frequency.
We listen to music and shows primarily on iPods, phones, and so forth these days, but before smartphones were TVs. And before TVs were radios. And even now, when you want to listen to something in particular on the radio, you must turn to the right channel; to the right frequency. A bad signal causes poor sound. And depending on how bad it is, you may or may not understand what is being said. It’s easier and less problematic when you’re talking about music, but in the days of World War II, a properly working radio tuned to the right frequency was the difference between life and death.
On Netflix, there’s an interesting mini-series called Churchill’s Secret Agents. In it, modern-day individuals are put through the same training that the secret agents under Prime Minister Winston Churchill went through, and we watch to see who advances through the bootcamp and is worthy of being called one of Churchill’s secret agents. They were imperative in the fight against the Nazis and their Axis partners. Part of the training included learning Morse Code and then receiving the codes over the radio. The codes were coordinates so the team could meet together and complete their mission. If you missed a small part of the code, you MAY have been able to infer the missing piece from the context of the rest. Or you may not.
You and I are like those agents in training. We are indeed in an army and the Lord has a mission for each of our lives. Sure, there is an overall endgame put in place by our Commander-in-Chief, and thankfully, the victory is ours. However, the question of our personal success in this big picture is not fixed. Broken, infrequent, or incomplete information can be and often is the difference between being in the will of God or being outside; between being covered under His protection or being wounded or even a casualty of war.
In Revelation 1, John the Beloved is in exile on the Isle of Patmos, but his spirit-man was close to the Father, close to the Son. He told us,
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. (Revelation 1:10-12)
John was so close to God that He was in the Spirit of God on the Lord’s day. His spirit was ENGULFED by God’s Holy Spirit, so much so that he HEARD clearly the voice of the Christ, and then, turned around and SAW with the eyes of his spirit-man the Voice that spoke to him. And for three chapters, John records the voice of the Son of Man and His words to the seven churches in Asia Minor. Ah, but then a glorious thing happens!
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
Immediately I was in the Spirit… (Revelation 4:1-2)
John HEARD, he SAW, and then he ENTERED! The frequency on which he heard God was so high that he heard the invitation of the Son of Man for him to COME UP into the Throne Room of the Father and see what the Spirit would have him record for the Latter Days. W O W . I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to get on THAT level!!
Or take Enoch, if you will. Even before salvation and redemption as we understand it, even before the New Covenant under grace, heck, even before the Old Covenant of the Law, Enoch was so in tuned with the Spirit of God that He simply “was not.”
Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begot Enoch. After he begot Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters….
Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Genesis 5:18-24)
In the whole genealogy from Adam to Noah listed in Genesis 5, Enoch was the only one identified as having walked with God. It doesn’t mean the others listed didn’t. There are extrabiblical books which back the Bible that state Adam was a prophet, and obviously, Genesis 6:9 calls Noah “perfect in his generations.” According to Jewish tradition, Methuselah died the week of the Flood (although not in it), which meant the Lord intentionally spared the oldest man to ever walk the face of the planet from destruction because he found grace in God’s eyes. Likely, his heart either did not desire to see a world post-wrath or his heart could not have handled it. So God, in His grace and omniscience, took Methuselah to his father and his Father. But Enoch, simply walked out of this world into the next.
I don’t know if the Lord sent a chariot as He did for Elijah. I don’t know if he ascended on a cloud like Jesus. But somehow I don’t picture it being that flashy, because I don’t personally picture Enoch as a flashy kind of man. I picture it as being as simple as Adam walking with God in the cool of the Garden. Enoch is walking with God in the cool of the day, and then he’s no longer visible. He was so close to God, so in tuned, that He walked from one realm into the next. He heard, he saw, he walked, and as the vision closed around him, he was no more in this earthly realm. Again, I say W O W.
Remember, however, that the closer you are to God and the higher you are in God, the less other people will understand what He’s saying. This is why you must guard the Word of the Lord for your life. Everyone does not deserve your accountability. Everyone can’t cover you. Everyone cannot [help you] steward the Words you receive. They’re simply not on the same frequency. This can cause confusion, misunderstanding, and even jealousy and everything that that entails. But against all of it, you must follow God.
And PLEASE, find a covering and a tribe that hears on a similar frequency and can keep you close and high in God. These can help to serve as checks and balances to make sure you continue tapping into the right frequencies and that you never start picking up another one that is not of God.
SUMMARY
The Law of Continuous Hearing teaches us that what we continually hear is what creates the atmosphere around us. What you continuously hear is what will manifest in your life. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, change [shift, cancel, reject, evict] what you’re continuously hearing.
The Law of Interpretation teaches us that HOW we hear is just as important as WHAT we hear. Your filter and your lens should be the Word of God. Use your “spiritual imagination” to envision what the will of God is for your life, and when a VAIN imagination that exalts itself against the knowledge of God rises up, it must be cast down, punished, and destroyed. Bring EVERY thought captive to the obedience of Christ and how you hear will be blessed.
The Law of Incubation deals with internalising the written, rhema, or prophetic Word of God; it deals with the germination of the Word. Just like an egg that turns into a baby, so you must guard and nurture the Word of the Lord that you hear so the thing can come to pass at the appointed time.
The Law of Proximity very simply tells us that the closer we are to God, the better we hear Him. If you’re not hearing Him on a continuous basis, then you’re too far away. Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you.
The Law of Frequencies teaches us that coming close is not enough; we must come higher as well. Oh, but when we do, the vision of God for our life will explode, expand, and engulf us completely! Be confident in the Word of the Lord, but surround yourself with others who hear on the same or higher frequencies so they can “get you right” and keep you right as a checks and balances system. Everyone will not understand what you hear, but the right people will be able to try [judge, test, weigh, examine] the spirits to see if they indeed be of God.
Hearing the Lord is SO important! We need the written as well as the spoken Word, the Word and the Spirit! They are a checks and balance system against veering off into legalism (heavy Word, little Spirit) or mysticism (heavy Spirit, little Word).
Now more than ever, hearing God, utilizing not just discernment [keen wisdom] but the discerning of spirits, is imperative to our daily lives and the corporate Body of Christ in general. We must teach ourselves to hear God so we can always be found in His perfect will.
