Active acceptance of Truth

Proverbs 4:10  "Listen, my son, accept what I say, and the years of your life will be many."

Listening and accepting are two distinctly different acts. Listening entails the reception of input, while accepting speaks to the processing of that input. The concepts seem similar in some ways to "data" and "information". Data is simply unfiltered, unsorted words and numbers. Information is the processing, translation or analysis that takes place to turn raw data into something useful.

The idea that we may accept what we hear tells us that we have another choice- to reject what we hear. Rejection can be active (as in, "I've thought about this and I choose to reject it") or passive (as in, "I've not thought about it or am indifferent, therefore I reject it").  Acceptance can be active or passive, with the passive being an assumption that something is true.

An assumption of truth can stem from three possibilities:

1) the source of the information (i.e. if the source of the information has credibility, we presume they speak the truth)

2) the location in which the information was received (i.e. we heard it in church or in a bar, which may imply truth on one end of the spectrum and a false claim on the other) (I'll let you decide which place you think fits each end of the spectrum)

3) the medium through which the message came to us (i.e. something seen on a respected TV program, or read in a respected newspaper or journal can carry a presumption of truth)

The only true source of truth, though, is God.  He can and does, in my opinion, use a variety of means and methods to communicate truth to us. It is obviously important that we listen to Him when He speaks to us. It is also vitally important that we accept what He says.

This acceptance should be a unique blend of active and passive acceptance. The active part means we should meditate on His truth and actively accept and incorporate these truths into our lives. But even if our processing of His truth leads to us resisting or even disagreeing, we can and should accept His truth based on who He is and what He has promised us.

There is another form of listening and acceptance that I believe is equally important. Another source of data and information exists in this world that we are confronted with every day. Satan sends us messages and spreads his version of the truth. We can actively accept his lies (because they make sense to us or otherwise appeal to us) or passively accept (it was said through some channel that is credible, therefore I accept it as true). We must learn to recognize these lies and actively reject them, with equal strength and diligence as we use to accept God's truth.