So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
James 1:19
John Calvin’s comment on James 1:19 applies the verse to the way we hear God.
We do not calmly hear God speaking to us, when we seem to ourselves to be very wise, but by our haste interrupt Him when addressing us, the Apostle requires us to be silent, to be slow to speak. And, doubtless, no one can be a true disciple of God, except he always hears God in the humility of silence.
Calvin is right about hearing God in the humility of silence.
Do you listen to God? Are you too quick to talk back to God?
Even when we pray… the time is too often spent coaching/advising God on what He should do instead of listening to His Word and submitting to Him in faithful prayer.
Matthew Henry’s comment applies the verse to our responses to difficulty and trial.
This lesson we should learn under afflictions; and this we shall learn if we are indeed begotten again by the word of truth. An angry and hasty spirit is soon provoked to ill things by afflictions, and errors and ill opinions become prevalent through the workings of our own vile and vain affections; but the renewing grace of God and the word of the gospel teach us to subdue these.
It is our duty rather to hear God’s word, and apply our minds to understand it, than to speak according to our own fancies or the opinions of men, and to run into heat and passion thereupon.
Henry is right about our common tendency to judge and feel and decide according to our own fancies rather than the Word of truth.
Are you hearing – really listening to – the Word of God?