This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20
Bad Examples of Listening
One of the greatest obstacles we will have to overcome in our quest to become good listeners is our early training and subsequent habits. As children, we may have been told to be quiet, to stop interrupting, or to go away because Mommy and Daddy had no time to listen. We may have gotten the idea from that that grown-ups don’t have to listen. Studies of school children have revealed that listening declines with each successive grade
It also seems as though the older we get, the more we allow ourselves to be distracted by other factors such as the speaker’s personal appearance or annoying mannerisms. I can remember talking frequently to someone who would ask after every few sentences, “Do you know what I mean?” I found myself thinking more about that idiosyncrasy than about what he was saying.
The truth is we don’t stop listening with our ears but with our minds. Keeping someone’s attention long enough to communicate a full thought has turned into an art form. Maybe what we are saying is very important to us but not yet to them. Sometimes listening can be threatening to us or the one spoken to. We fear that we may hear some criticism of ourselves that we would rather not have to confront, some change that we would rather not make, or some demand that we would rather not meet. We may hear an idea that challenges some precious opinion of ours that we would rather not give up. Our best defense is to stop paying attention. We may simply feel that it will take too much effort to understand what is being said to us, so we take the easy way out and turn off our mental hearing aids. It is too much trouble to listen. So why bother?
The Motive for Listening – Love
If I were to suggest one good reason for cultivating the art of listening, it would be found in 1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Listening is an important and necessary expression of love. Listening says, “I care about you. You are important enough to invest all the time and effort that is necessary for me to understand you.” We want to be assured that somebody knows us, is sensitive to what is happening inside us, feels what we are feeling in the deepest part of our being, and still accepts us and cares for us. So love listens.
We can say with our mouths over and over again, “I love you,” but it is meaningless unless we are willing to put aside other things and give of ourselves unselfishly to discern the deepest needs of the ones we profess to love. True love is focused on the benefit of others rather than our own benefit, and that means trying to understand them. We all want so desperately to be understood, but God is asking us to take the time to do the understanding.
Here is a vital point concerning the power of being an effective listener: People do not need to know what you think of what they said so much as to know you understand what they said and, thus, understand them. That’s what this is all about...being understood.
Can you find someone to listen to today and minister through the power of attention?
Scripture to Claim:
They have said, "The LORD does not see, Nor does the God of Jacob pay heed." Pay heed, you senseless among the people; And when will you understand, stupid ones? He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? Psalms 94:7-9
