And He was saying to them, “Take care what you listen to.” Mark 4:24.
My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your sight; keep them in the midst of your heart. For they are life to those who find them and health (medicine) to all their body. Proverbs 4:20-22.
He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. Psalm 107:20.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
What you listen to is very important. Be careful what you hear. Hear My words, you wise men, and listen to Me, you who know. For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Choose for yourselves what is right; know among yourselves what is good. Job 34:2-4. Just as you would not put rotten or poisonous food in your mouth and eat it, so too you must not permit rotten, evil and poisonous words to enter you through your ears.
Why would you not eat rotten or poisonous food once you discern it? Because it will make you sick, infirm, or even kill you. Even if small doses of a poison do not kill you immediately, they will overtime if you keep ingesting it day after day. And it will first deteriorate you and undermine your health, making you weak and sickly. And you may not even attribute it to the food you are eating.
Well, the same is true of what you listen to. What you hear goes into your mind and down into your body, into the pit of your stomach and into your very bones. Have you never read that good news makes your bones strong? Proverbs 15:30. When you receive a bad or fearful report, you will find that you have what people describe as “butterflies” in your stomach and may break out in a cold sweat. Other times something you hear may give you “goosebumps” or cause other reactions in your body. Negative and offensive speech brings reactions in your body, just as good, soothing and comforting words also do. And when people find words that please them, they give good amounts of their time to pursuing reading and hearing more. This can work good or evil, life or death, purity or impurity, beauty or ugliness, youthful vigor or aged weakness, and a host of other things in your bodies—and I mean your inner organs and your outer appearance—just by what you are listening to and reading about. If it is words of evil and darkness—such as pornography and immoral, lustful content, or fear filled news and talk of sickness, plagues and impending disaster—how deep will your darkness be and it will begin to destroy your flesh and your body. If it is Words of Spirit and Life and Words of eternal life, they will bring healing, health, strength, peace and long good life to you. You choose.
“I will hear what God the LORD will say; for He will speak peace to His people, to His godly ones; but let them not turn back to folly.” Psalm 85:8. Read that Scripture. Do you see? Listen to My Words for they will give you peace (shalom, which means wholeness in all areas of your life—good health, good relationships, prosperity, protection, and direction) and make you godly. But do not turn back to folly—you cannot listen to My Words and then turn back to the words of the worldly—to following the counsel of the wicked and sitting with scoffers. What does light have in common with darkness? Which words are you giving more time to in your day? Even if you start your day reading from My Word and praying. Do you then spend twelve to seventeen hours just listening to unbelievers, media that is contrary to My Word, lust filled magazines, gossip and obscenities? Be careful what you hear.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing. And it works with anything you are hearing and hearing. That is why they repeat commercials over and over. Eventually if you hear it enough it will make it so you also agree and think like that unless you actively refute it and countermand it with My Word. Be discerning. And many people that have listened to the idle chatter of a friend, family member, or acquaintance have found that the obscene joke, offensive word, or harmful gossip you were told is still embedded in your mind and you can remember all that was stated in vivid detail. It has poisoned a part of your mind from which you have been unable to erase it. Be careful what you listen to.
What do you do if you put something that looks okay but tastes absolutely vile in your mouth? You spit it out. And if it hits your stomach and is vile enough, it will make you vomit it out. Well, that should be the same with what you listen to. If when it gets in your hear it tastes vile to your ear, shut it out by countering it with My Word. But you need a discerning ear that has been trained in what is good for those who hear and what is not. But the same is true with eating with your mouth, you can find pleasant and desirable to the taste foods that make your bodies weak, sickly, and obese so as to destroy your health and strength slowly.
Eve saw that the fruit that I had warned them not to eat, for they would surely die the death if they partook of it, was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and because she had also listened to the words of the devil that the tree was desirable to make one wise and would not cause her to die if she ate it, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:6. This caused death to her and her husband as well as going down to her children and all mankind. Why? She listened to a lie and did not countermand it with My Word on the same subject. And the result? She could no longer discern its deadly nature. Be careful what you listen to.
What if instead she had responded to that ancient serpent, the devil, as he smoothly spoke to her undermining My Words, “I find that distasteful, do not speak like that anymore in my presence.”? There would be an entirely different outcome for her and all mankind to the present day. Do you see how important it is to screen what you listen to? Jesus told the disciples if a place would not receive My Words, the shake the dust from their feet and go on. Take care what you listen to. And take care of others too by what you say in their hearing. “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:29-32. Be especially careful of what you say around your children, you want only to input the good they need to grow up well on. Do not complain about your spouse to your children.
Today a deep darkness covers the earth because people are full of wrong information, they are wandering in the futility of their minds and ways handed on from their ancestors, being darkened in their understanding, knowing nothing of My life giving Words because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
What is the answer? How do you get rid of all the wrong information and the harmful, idle, immoral input that is archived in you which creates wrong habits, actions, words, and a dull mindset that you have grown up on and which has been imparted into you from when you were born an infant from the womb? It is the same answer I gave Ezekiel, you need a heart transplant—your stony heart removed and a new living heart put in. It is the answer that Jesus gave to Nicodemus, “You must be born again from above.” Born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring Word of God, My Word. 1 Peter 1:23. Formed anew in the womb of My Word with no deformity, no abnormality, born again perfect from the womb of My Word, not from the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of Me. John 1:13. What is born of flesh is flesh, but what is born of Spirit is spirit. My Words are Spirit and Life, Words of eternal life.
But then how will you grow so that you no longer have the old information and mindset? “Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the goodness and kindness of the Lord.” 1 Peter 2:1-3. Don’t go back, learn anew and be transformed by the renewal of your mind by feeding it only the pure milk of the Word. Babies cannot eat other food, they must have milk. Other food has no attraction to them.
And that leads to another question that I will ask you now. How do you know if you or anyone else is truly born again? Well compare it to the physical birth of an infant, the baby longs for, seeks, and searches for the mother’s milk. You too, when you are born again of My Word, hunger, seek, and search for the milk of the one who birthed you, and when you are born again of My Word there begins a hunger in you for My Word. If someone says he or she is born again but has no interest in reading, hearing, speaking, listening to the preaching of the Word from the Bible, but rather despises it, refuses to honor it, and seeks other media instead as more interesting, it is doubtful that such a one has really been born again.
The world will substitute another milk that is not the milk of My Word. Like the formula mixtures the world will substitute for the mother’s milk for her infant to grow upon. If the baby has had the mother’s milk, the formula is rejected at first for it is not the real milk. If you have “tasted the goodness and kindness of the Lord,” 1 Peter 2:1-3, you won’t tolerate another word in its place. And you should not no matter how closely it tries to mimic language from My Word or pull it out of context. If you are hearing a sermon that is contrary to My Word, leave that place and protect yourself. Wrong doctrines are not uncommon even in your churches today.
I wash your mind with the water of the Word and feed your newborn spirit on the Word, and as you grow and understand righteousness, I can feed you the meat of the Word. As you grow the food I give you in My Word gets stronger and stronger, higher and higher. It is like Jesus told the apostles that night before He died for you, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now, but when the Holy Spirit comes, He will guide you to all truth.” John 16:12-13. Let Him bring you to a higher and higher level of revelation in My Word. He leads mature children.
I love you. Be careful what and who you listen to. You can never have too much of My Word, but you can have too little. My Word is medicine to all your flesh, you cannot overdose, but you can underdose.