Learning to Listen…to God & to Others

Scriptures: Matthew 13:3-9, Matthew 13:19-23, Acts 28:26-27

If We Miss His Voice, We Miss Everything!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best when he penned, “The first service that one owes to others is the ministry of listening. And the beginning of love for others is listening to them.” 

Let’s get honest as we get started here and admit that most people need serious help in this area. If there is one thing you could do to deepen your life in the Lord and breathe life into your relationships with other Christians, and people in general, it would be to become a better listener. 

A skillful listener is the key to having more than just electroplated thin relationships…strictly on the surface. You know what I mean…conversation after conversation that might as well just bemusing about the weather, sports, or listening to someone talk about themselves. And listening is the fundamental necessity for intimacy with Christ. How have we missed such a critical component of life? 

Listening is just one form of communication—though crucial—along with reading, writing, speaking, and non-verbal forms (body language and visual communication). But, we don’t teach ourselves to read…and writing doesn’t come naturally. How many people do you know who are just natural speakers and love to get up in front of others and talk? Why would we think people naturally listen well? 

I’ve been in every level of educational leadership for more than 40 years, and to my amazement, I have not encountered a single course on listening skills in any curriculum anywhere. Somehow, we have missed teaching the crucial skill of listening. 

Few things challenge our impatience and selfishness as much as listening to someone with our full attention. When was the last time someone with deep empathy, understanding, and tenderness listened to you? They didn’t jump in with a similar story, get interrupted by their phone, or end the conversation abruptly and rush off? How did that make you feel when someone really listened and understood you? 

The most important thing I will say to you in these five days is this – we must learn to hear the voice of the Lord. If we miss His voice, we have missed everything. And you will see in the next few days that learning to listen to the voice of the Lord and that of others is strikingly similar and remarkably simple.

Scriptures: Matthew 17:1-6, James 1:26, Revelation 2:7, Revelation 2:17, Luke 9:33

Stop That Babbling 

In one of the Bible’s most glorious and mysterious moments, Jesus takes James, John, and Peter up in the mountains. Before their very eyes, Jesus is transfigured.Then Moses and Elijah show up and start having a conversation with Jesus. Wow…I would be listening to every word. 

But not Peter. While Moses and Elijah are talking to Jesus, Peter butts in and answers for Jesus and suggests they build a dwelling and just stay there. What was he thinking? Luke (9:33) adds this description to Peter’s ramblings, “He did not know what he was saying.” 

Now, the scene takes a seismic shift. 

While he was going on like this, babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him.” (Matt. 17:5, MSG). God shows up in a cloud, surrounds them all, interrupts Peter, and summarily says, stop talking and listen to My Son! 

Peter was guilty of “jumping in.” You know what I mean. You are talking with someone or are in a group, and before your lips can stop moving, a person parachutes in and hijacks the conversation. What is it about us that when we are conversing with other people, our minds are running, contemplating a response?When we do this, we are making life all about us. Let me be blunt; we need to stop running our mouths if we are ever going to start really listening. 

Here’s the deal: You will never be able to hear the Lord or get to know Him intimately as long as you are talking.That also applies to your relationships with others. When applied to your daily life, this truth will transform your interactions with God and with others: You never get to know someone by talking about yourself! Stop talking about yourself to others. 

James wanted us to connect the dots between our mouth and the words that cross our tongue…and our heart. You will never be a good listener until your heart can be turned outward (towards others) by the power of the Holy Spirit, and you can begin to hold your tongue. 

Scriptures: Psalms 141:3, Proverbs 12:18, Proverbs 21:23

Listening to Listen 

A few years ago, I decided to quit offering anyone advice. I realized that if anyone wanted my advice, they would ask for it. But I didn’t foresee the serendipitous effect that would ignite. I immediately noticed that I was listening more to understand. 

One profound problem that blocks our genuine listening to others is the propensity to give advice. Gratuitous advice reveals that you think you know more than the person you are talking with and that what you share is correct. 

This gratuitous advice stream is particularly harmful when conversing with someone who is sharing something in the way of a painful situation, emotional trauma, or disappointment. When someone opens up to you, they want to be heard, not given advice. And the last thing they need is to have you compare your experience with theirs. 

I hope you have encountered the spiritual experience of listening to someone who needed a compassionate listener. That is the ministry they required. I have observed that people who have shared life’s traumas with others are more likely to be the “good” listeners. 

Stephen Covey said, “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.” It is a weighty space to be in, listening to someone’s heart cry. The worst thing you can do is immediately offer your solution to theirproblems. 

Our goal is to hear the heart of the Lord and others. One of my friends shared this story: 

“When my son was in the U. S. Air Force and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school, they taught downed pilots how to survive. Listening is the number one needed skill to evade capture. We were together on a hike with 10 people. My son and I split off; the leading group was 300 yards away. My son said, “Stop. And listen.” I did for a bit and said, “I don’t hear anything.” He said, “Stop talking, be perfectly still, and just listen.”

“It was nuts. After about two minutes of being still I could hear the entire world around me. The footsteps of the leading group were hundreds of yards away, and they were talking. The wind was blowing, and water was running somewhere I couldn’t see. He said it was one of the hardest things to teach fighter pilots because listening directly opposes how they do life.” 

How do you do life?

Scriptures: James 3:2-12, 1 Peter 3:10

Practices in Listening 

Now, for a quick review of what we have learned so far: 

The first thing in becoming a good listener is to turn off every instinct to talk about yourself. Doing this will confront your impatience and selfishness.If you lose the moment by making it about you, you will never go deeper in the Lord or with others. 

I went with a friend a few years back to hear John Maxwell speak at a luncheon. My friend always gets seats at the front. We arrived early, and my friend headed off somewhere. Wouldn’t you know it? John Maxwell was also early and sat at the head table next to me. We ended up talking for 15 uninterrupted minutes. After dinner and on the way home, my friend asked me what John and I had discussed. As I ruminated over our conversation, it became apparent that John had humbly peppered me with questions about my profession, things I had learned about education, and how I integrated my spiritual life into my work. He had turned the conversation on me and spent the entire 15 minutes getting to know me. 

John Maxwell is skilled in the art of inquiry. He knows how to ask questions and get to know someone. More importantly, John can engage, listen, and give people a sense of worth by valuing their opinions, thoughts, and experiences. 

Let’s establish this fact.You must be teachable if you want to listen to God and to people. You must be open-minded, even curious. You must approach conversations humbly instead of showing off how much you know or trying to prove a point. 

Here are a few tips for better listening: 

1. Stop multi-tasking! Keep your phone out of sight and have it turned off. Not only will this bash the phone’s distractions, but it will also show respect for the other person. 
2. Make it a habit to give someone your full attention, try hard to understand them, and acknowledge what they are saying. When you send non-verbal communication signals, it indicates you are intensely listening. 
3. Make it your goal to be skilled in asking deep-hearted questions. When forming relationships with others, genuinely hearing them, making them feel valued, and asking meaningful questions will win the day. 

Scriptures: Isaiah 50:4, John 5:30, John 12:49-50, Proverbs 8:34-35

Discerning the Voice of the Lord 

Research has proven that you can become so accustomed to a person’s voice that you can identify it even in a raucous crowd.You can even understand what is being said. So, how does that happen? How do you learn to hear God’s voice like that?There is one key ingredient for which there is no substitute – time! Time is the essential element in any relationship. 

Finding time for the Lord in your hectic schedule may be one of the greatest challenges in your relationship with Christ. Someone asked Dallas Willard, the great Christian Philosopher, what they would need in order to be spiritually healthy. After a long pause, Dallas said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” 

I spent most of two years praying, studying, and meditating on the 23 times Jesus prayed in the gospels. I eventually wrote a book about it. I wanted to know the secret of Jesus’ prayer life. And I found it! Jesus often spent time alone with the Father, but most of that time was spent quietly listening, not talking. The Father trained Jesus’ ear to hear His voice. Read that verse in Isaiah 50:4. This is how Jesus could arrive at a place in His relationship with the Father where He could say, the Father tells me what to say and what to speak. 

God has promised us this: Through prayer, the Word, and a huge dose of time, you can learn to hear His voice. If you spend more time in God’s presence, being silent, His Spirit will teach you. 

Bonhoeffer said, in his seminal work on fellowship with God and others – Life Together, “Silence before the Word leads to right hearing and thus also to the right speaking of the Word of God at the right time.” 

Bonhoeffer puts his finger on how we can hear God: Silence ourselves before the Spirit and His Word and listen intentionally with many fewer distractions. 

God is not mercurial in His speaking to us. He doesn’t blithely download a word here and there. He is constant. His Word is always at our fingertips. Deliberately be still and listen to the Lord. The Spirit will teach you to hear the voice of God.