Listen More Than You Speak
James 1:19a You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak.
Isn’t it just the most amazing thing, when somebody actually takes the time to stop and listen to what you have to say?
I don’t mean that they stop talking just long enough to figure out the next thing that they’re going to say. I mean, when somebody actually takes the time to listen to you and really understand what it is that you’re trying to get across.
I have to confess, I am not naturally a good listener. I’m born to talk, to do what I’m doing right now. As a brash, young IT consultant, I used to think that communication was all about me talking and showing other people how clever I was.
Fortunately, I had a mentor, a man twenty years my senior, who took the time to teach me the incredible power of listening.
It’s something, by the way, that I’m still learning. And I suspect that many of us need to keep working on it. Because listening, stopping, taking the time to understand someone else – even if you don’t agree with them – is one of the most important, the most powerful life skills that we will ever learn.
You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak. (James 1:19a)
We live in a world where the exact opposite is true. Whether it’s face-to-face or in social media, everybody, it seems, is talking … but very few are actually listening.
Recently a good friend of mine in his eighties passed away and his widow asked me to take his funeral service. I was sitting with her, her daughters and the funeral director in their home, planning the funeral … and for the most part, I just listened. At this point I quietly gave thanks for my mentor who all those years before had taught me the power of listening.
There were times in that two hours or so, where frankly, I thought they could have made up their minds much more quickly about this detail or that. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about me, it was about them, their grieving process and the way they wanted to say farewell to their husband and father.
I noticed too, that even though she had a job to do, the funeral director was an incredibly good listener. I walked away from that time feeling so privileged at having been able to be there and just listen to them talk.
Come on, it’s a privilege to hear what’s in someone else’s heart. And it so honours the other person, it shows them such respect, when we simply sit down, shut up, and take the time to listen.
Let everyone be quick to listen and slow to speak.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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