Who Has Your Ear?

The centurion had a decision to make. Winter was approaching, the harbor at Fair Havens was not ideal, and the experts in the room—the pilot and the owner of the ship—wanted to push on. Paul, a prisoner with no credentials in navigation, had already warned them: “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives” (Acts 27:10). The centurion listened to the men who were supposed to know. He paid more attention to the pilot and the owner than to what Paul said.

That choice looked reasonable. Paul was not a ship captain. What would he know about winds, harbors, and timing? Yet days later, after the ship had been battered and the crew had gone without food, Paul stood among them and said the quiet words that still land with weight: “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss.”

Who we listen to—in large matters and in small—shapes the trajectory of our lives. Scripture returns to this again and again. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Jesus told a whole parable about it. To the churches in Revelation the Spirit repeatedly says the same thing: hear what the Spirit is saying. The voice we give our attention to becomes the voice that steers us.

Paul was not an expert in sailing. He was, however, a man close to God. He was not driven by profit or by the pressure of the calendar. He was driven by love for Jesus and by a settled confidence that God was taking him to Rome. He could take risks when he knew he had clear direction, and he could wait when he did not. The pilot and the owner, by contrast, were working under other pressures. There is an old saying that “time is money.”

Sometimes when we are already convinced of what we want to do, even a gentle wind can feel like confirmation. We start reading signs that are not really signs.

This does not mean every expert is wrong or that every godly person is right about everything. We need humility about speaking into areas where we lack real knowledge. When I was facing cancer, well-meaning Christians offered all kinds of advice—often contradictory, sometimes at odds with what the physicians were saying. The noise was overwhelming.

In the quiet, with an open Bible, I sensed that God was in control of the circumstances and was providentially leading. The doctor He placed in front of me knew what he was doing and more than that, the Lord who holds life and death was sovereign. God used that doctor, and years later I remain cancer-free. The point is not that we dismiss expertise, but that we test every voice—including the expert’s—against the God who sees the whole story.

Paul’s confidence did not come from superior seamanship. It came from nearness to the Lord. He was a praying man whose life was guided. He knew it was God’s will for him to reach Rome and that even the Roman authorities were being used in that purpose. His rest was not in the ship or the crew, but in the Creator of heaven and earth.

So the questions land close to home. Who are we giving our attention to? Whose ear do we trust when the wind is favorable and the calendar is pressing? Are we close to people who are close to God—people whose counsel is not shaped by selfish ambition, financial gain, or the fear of man? Most of all, are we giving God our undivided attention? Do we get alone with Him simply to know Him, to rest in His sovereignty, and to seek His guidance—or do we mostly pray when we are in crisis or when we want Him to bless plans we have already made?

The ship in Acts 27 was eventually destroyed. Yet it carried Paul closer to the place God intended him to be—not because the experts were flawless, but because a man who stayed near the Lord was being guided by the One who commands the winds and the waves. The same Lord still speaks. The question is whether we will give Him our ear.