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To listen to an audio version of this post, visit www.covenantchurch.ca/podcasts/covenant-weekly.

Good Morning, Covenant Family. On Sunday, Elise led us to consider what it looks like to live with a listening heart to God’s instruction. I’m grateful for her wisdom, vulnerability, insight, and skill as she led us in considering the text for this week. This morning, I’m going to piggyback on what she said and consider something that I regularly need to be reminded of when it comes to living with a listening heart. This is the Covenant Weekly for November 3, 2026.

My dad was my math teacher for most of my high school experience. As such, I heard the same advice he’d give all of his students. Advice like, the only way to learn math is to do math. For most of my time in high school I was very good at math. It came easily to me and I could do it quickly. But when giving us tests, my dad never wanted us to hand in our tests too quickly. He told us, if you finish, read over the whole test at least three times before you hand it in. Don’t just skim it. Really read over it and check everything you did. And when those of us who could breeze through the tests handed them in early, he’d ask, “Did you read it over completely at least three times?” To which we inevitably lied and said, “Yes.”

Despite his advice, I regularly got a test back to find that I’d lost marks for what we often describe as “stupid mistakes.” These were mistakes in basic arithmetic or forgetting a simple step - mistakes that a) I shouldn’t have made, and b) that I would have caught if I had followed the instructions to thoroughly read the test over at least three times after I thought I was done.

When I think of having a listening heart, my first instinct is that it is describing our attempts to hear and discern God’s leading in context where it isn’t obviously clear, where a special level of wisdom is needed. Sometimes, though, the issue isn’t that we have a hard time listening. It is we choose not to follow the advice or instruction that we have clearly heard.

Elise mentioned on Sunday that Solomon fostered peace for Israel. He entered into treaties with other nations, married hundreds of foreign women, and got incredibly rich. These things played a strong role in getting him away from having a listening heart. What is interesting is that in Deuteronomy, there is an account of instructions given to Israel before they even entered the land God had promised him. Some of those instructions are given to a king. Here is what it says in Deuteronomy 17.

16 The king [of Israel], moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

When you read Solomon’s story, it explicitly talks about him getting horses from Egypt, taking many wives, and getting incredibly rich. His story is told in Kings in a way that highlights how he did all the things God had told kings not to do in Deuteronomy.

The issue wasn’t primarily that he didn’t hear God on complicated and discerning matters. It was that he chose not to listen to things that had been clearly said.

We do this so easily ourselves. I’ve spent many hours wrestling with hard theological or ethical questions while failing to love my enemy - or even my neighbour. I’ve wondered why I was feeling disconnected from God while living a life disconnected from God’s people. (See Hebrews 10:25) I’ve watched churches get off track because of an emphasis on the “three B’s” (buildings, budgets, and butts in the seat) rather than seeking “first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” In each case, and so many more, it wasn’t that some elusive wisdom was missed. It was that clearly presented guidance was ignored.

Our church is a part of a larger group of churches called Anabaptists, who have been around for over 500 years. When asked to summarize what it means to be Anabaptist, a previous Executive Director of the Be In Christ Church of Canada used to say, “People who take Jesus’ sermon on the mount seriously.” That is, we didn’t dismiss “love your enemy” as a hard to understand passage in favour of reading the violent stories in Joshua as how God wants us to live. Our goal (often not lived out successfully) is to pay attention to the clearly presented guidance from Jesus first. With that foremost in mind, heart, and life, we can wrestle with how to understand and be led by the rest of scripture.

There are many hard questions that we are invited to consider. But before those, there are many clear instructions and much simple wisdom that we can embrace. Is something that is clear, that you’ve been finding ways to not pay attention to? How might God be leading you back to the basics, the clear Jesus-like things, this week? Prioritizing those things first might be exactly what we need to keep our listening heart tuned in and ready to hear in those settings that are harder to discern.