Listening as Love

One way to show love to others is to truly listen. Hearing is different than listening. To hear means you only hear the sound of words, but it doesn't mean any thought has been taken to truly understand and process what has been said.

People can tell if you've been listening to them and feel loved or respected if they know you're listening. They can tell by your questions and responses and if you remember what was said later.

It's not always easy to listen. Our brains are powerful and have the ability to process thoughts faster than words are spoken, so we have to purposely try to not have our thoughts go to the next thing or how to respond before the person is stating their complete thought when we should focus on what the person is saying.

And this principle also applies to listening to God's word. Listening to God's Word is one way to show love to God. We should think about his Words enough to truly understand. The same principles apply.

Truth and Passion

Truth and passion need to be linked in the Christian faith. Too often we find passion toward life without any firm basis in truth or truth without a firm passion behind the truth.

We need both truth and passion in our Christian walks working together. The Christian message is a message full of content. The content of the Christian message should motivate us to action.

The direction is that truth comes before the passion and the passion is based on the truth. But the truth of Christianity should always motivate some form of action.

That is not to say that every text in scripture has an immediate clear application to life. It is easy to attempt to force scriptural passages to have an application when we do not see one. Often if we read a text we will not always see its application in the moment, but if we study the text later a situation will come when the application will become apparent.

All scripture is useful for life. We may not always see the use and it is important to not try to force the use out of a scriptural text when we do not see the use in the moment. But we should always trust that when we read scripture God is speaking to us.

Sometimes we do not understand what he is saying. Sometimes he is saying something to us not for this moment but one many years down the road. But God is always speaking to us. We need to listen even when we do not understand what is being said.

Sometimes when we listen carefully even if we do not understand what a text means then we will understand later. But if we do not understand and thus fail to listen or stop reading then we will never understand the message in a text.

Listening

The bible always encourages us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. The reality of life is that our pride causes us to wish to speak and not listen.

We cannot be of edification if we do not listen. Even if we know more than those we speak with we cannot edify by speaking.

I have found often when I have had problems people are quick to give advice without listening to what I have to say. You see they wasted my time and their time by not listening before speaking. You see their advice was worthless because it was so general I could have found it on a thousand web pages and had already seen similar advice on many.

Maybe they could have been of use if they first spent a few moments listening. They might have had something helpful to say if they spent a few moments listening to my situation instead of spending five minutes saying vague generalities which do not apply.

You see speaking with an expert on a topic is not necessarily of use if you have a question if they will not take time to listen to your question. This is how it is often in life with many issues. We all speak so much that no progress is made because we have never listened to other's issue.

A related issue is trying to have too many friends. There are those who try to juggle fifty relationships and do none of the relationships well. They are friends with so many people they cannot keep any of the details of their friend's life straight.

You see relationships take time. There is a thing as having too many friends. The issue is that friendships take time because they are based on knowledge. We must listen and learn to be truly good friends.

You cannot really listen effectively to the lives of fifty friends. I personally would rather have two to three really close friends than fifty friends whose lives I cannot keep straight.

I find at times there is a loneliness of being with people you have spent so much time interacting with that exceeds that of being completely alone. I have never felt so alone as being around people who I have spent years trying to share my life with and I know massive amounts of things about them, but they cannot keep the smallest facts about me straight.

The reality is that these people were too busy to really try to have a relationship with me. I wish they had accepted the fact and not gone out of their way to pretend they cared.

God Speaking

It is often noted that there seems to be some sort of spiritual danger associated with the systematic study of theology. It is as if the topic has harmed people.

It is not surprising really. In theology God speaks to us. If we are not prepared to listen we are not positively affected by the encounter and more likely we are negatively affected by the encounter.

You see one of the great issues with systematic study of theology as a profession or in seminary is approaching the topic with weariness. It would be like listening to the words of our spouse and simply not caring what they are saying.

If we are honest it is difficult to always care what God has to say. Some moments I'd rather simply sit and watch a sports game on TV than care what God has to say to me.

I admit on a few occasions I have simply woken up on a Sunday morning and decided not to go to church simply because I wasn't in the mood to hear what God had to say today.

I feel that in the end I am better for these decisions. I attempt to approach God with sincerity and when I cannot find the sincerity in myself at times I do not approach God.

There is nothing so hollow as religion that sees no importance in how we approach God. Programs where people read through scripture in a set time have the danger that people may be tempted to read to stay on track even if they don't care what the book of the bible is saying.

Sometimes less is more. I always feel a little theology or a little scripture studied with sincerity is better than a large amount of scripture or a large amount of theology studied because it should be.

An Honesty in Prayer

Prayer in the church often follows a formula. We it at times has a superficiality.

In a sense it is too theological and too pristine. I suppose there is nothing wrong with a theological and pristine prayer in the church, but I hope that in personal prayer lives prayer is not of this nature.

You see prayer is us talking to our father in heaven God. We do not need to remind him of theology or what we know. We need to speak freely to him.

Often our lives are a mess and it is important to say what we feel not what we feel we are supposed to say.

In relationships there must always be honesty. In the end God is right and we are often wrong but we need to be honest how we feel even if we admit it is wrong.

In life people may often go to a counselor to say what they feel. You see we should treat God in this way at some times as one who is there to listen.

It always seems more important that we tell God what we feel in prayer rather than to worry if our prayer is theologically acceptable or not. You see God will worry about how to respond but it is important that we say what we feel.

We act at times like God cannot handle our emotion or anger at things. As if we can hind our true feelings and heart and if we don’t express the feelings in prayer he will not know the feelings exist.

You see he already knows how we feel but it is of great help to express the feelings. In the psalms often the prayers are far more “woolly and rugged” than we see in the church. The reason is the prayers are truthful.

Often the modern prayers in the church replace theology with truth. Really it misses the point the prayer is a conversation and not an extension of the sermon or teaching tool.

Danger of Christian Scholarship

There is a great danger to Christian Scholarship. This is important for the academic to understand (as a warning to self) and the student (as a healthy suspicion of the academic).

The danger is that the bible only ever speaks to oneself. It wasn't intended to be studied ever in a primarily literary or thematic way.

The Christian scholar whose study of scripture does not contain an element of worship faces a great danger to his heart. To be honest we all find work difficult and at times tedious, but the danger is when we are approaching the word of God in this way.

To be honest I have always been a bit concerned by those who must study the bible every day or attend church every Sunday. There is a very good tendency in those things, but we must realize that we are entering into a the presence of God were God will speak to us.

I personally find there are moments where I'm not particularly interested in listening to God in this moment (maybe I am simply too tired). I actually consider that it is possible that to read scripture in some states where you are doing so out of duty can be detrimental to oneself.

If we are hearing God's word we must be prepared to listen. If we nod off a bit in church there is nothing wrong so long as we had really intended to listen in worship. But to simply come to church or scripture with no intent to listen is of great danger.

Christian scholars face this danger frequently. There is great pressure to study and publish a large amount of materials. But one must always remember the scriptures are always speaking directly to you.