God makes a covenant with those who are listening and heeding.
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourself in abundance.
Incline your ear and come to Me.
Listen, that you may live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
According to the faithful mercies shown to David. (Isaiah 55:2–3)[1]
One of the key experiences with the Father is that He gives you ears to hear. Whenever you need something, you come to Him. If you are thirsty, you come to Him and drink; if you have no money, you come to Him (Isaiah 55:1). And if you want ears to hear, you come to the Father. Yeshua (Jesus) made this clear by saying, “I can do nothing on My own initiative” (John 5:30). The Father in His love and grace simply gives you ears to hear.
Christ is the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29). He is the pattern Son, and a pattern is something that you follow so you can duplicate it. Everything that Yeshua became started at one point: God the Father opened Yeshua’s ears to hear the Word, and that Word was written on His heart. Yeshua became the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14).
One of the great prayers of Israel is the Shema prayer. The Hebrew word Shema means “to listen, to become and obey.” In God we can only become what we are first able to hear. There must be something that happens where we become listeners, not in a way of, “Oh, I heard that.” But did you Shema? Did you become obedient to that instruction? Christ was perfected through the things that He suffered because He was obedient. God is also humbling you and letting you know that you live by every Word that comes from His mouth (Deuteronomy 8:3).
We live in one of the most dynamic times the world has ever seen. We can talk about living in a moment of destiny but if that moment seems like it is off in the future, we will not do anything about it. God can even say it is a matter of life and death, but if it does not seem to be real until tomorrow or the next day, we will not do anything about it. Yet if you wait until tomorrow, it will be too late (Numbers 14:40–43). Therefore, we must have the mind of Christ that does something about the future today. The mind of Christ reaches in for the transformation today that is necessary for tomorrow.
Once again God is giving His sons ears to hear because then the process of sonship actually begins. Suddenly, like Christ speaking, “In the scroll of the book it is written of me” (Psalm 40:7), you have a revelation of who you are, what God has done for you, and what you are to do; then the Word that was written on your heart becomes a reality. If you have ears to hear, God will watch over that Word to perform it in you. Then just like Yeshua, you likewise will become the Word of God made flesh.
God is declaring to His people, “‘This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (Jeremiah 31:33). This is the Father’s covenant with those who have ears to hear.
[1] All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).