If only you would listen

Most of us will have known times when we regret things that we have said or done, or failed to say and do, and burst out, ‘Oh, if only I had . . .!’ Such idle regrets are usually an open invitation feels of worthlessness and condemnation – although they can serve some valid purpose if they make us more watchful and attentive in the future. As surely as those are empty regrets, there are occasions in Scripture when the Lord allows us to glimpse how deeply He regrets and mourns over the blindness and deafness of His people – not least because of all that we will are sure to suffer as a result. As He revealed to Asaph, “If My people would only listen to Me, if Israel would only follow My ways . . . But my people would not listen to Me; Israel would not submit to Me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. (See Psalm 81:11-13) Re-read the second and third chapters of Jeremiah and you are sure to hear more of the Lord’s deep heart cry, as He laments that after all He has done for the nation - and all that He was offering her – it had still turned away and refused to repent and return to Him. Hear the grief in the Lord’s heart as He expresses through Isaiah how things could have been: “If only you had paid attention to My commands, your peace would have been like a river.’ We are so sorry, Lord, for the grief that we have caused You, and the opportunities that we have missed. Thus too does Jesus grieve over Jerusalem, knowing well the utter disaster that its stubbornness and spiritual blindness would lead to. “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but for now it is hidden from you.” (Jer. 3:7; Is. 48:18; Luke 19:42) It grieves the Lord when we fail to listen to His voice, and to turn to Him with all our hearts. And there can be no sadder words to hear than to be on the wrong end of the Lord saying, ‘If only you had . . .” Back in 1980, at a time when the Lord was showing us the urgency of our times and calling us to intercede seriously for the nations, He gave us a number of profound and prophetic songs to rally people to this call. Many of these were written by Huw Humphreys. This particular song was written by him, with additional words by Robert Weston. With the help of Mike Halliday on clarinet, Jo Garcia on cello and Christiane von Albrecht on keyboard, Megan Topper shares in the words of that song words and sentiments that speak of the Lord's grief - as well as of His desire for us to heed His call, adjust our heart priorities and respond to His summons to rise up as the army of the Lord. As He looks down over nations and individuals that are straying far from His ways, let’s commit ourselves afresh to giving Him the joy and solace of sharing whole heartedly in the things that He is seeing and feeling.