Hearing And Listening

A man became convinced he was losing his hearing. He went to a specialist, who gave him a thorough checkup. The doctor brought out a ticking clock, and asked, “Can you hear this ticking?” The man replied, “Of course.”

The specialist walked to the door and held up the clock again. “Now can you hear it”? The man concentrated and said, “Yes, I can hear it clearly.”

The doctor walked out the door into the next room and said, “Can you hear it now?” The man said, “Yes”

“Well,” the doctor said, “there’s nothing wrong with your hearing. You’ve simply quit listening.”

How many of us have been accused of selective hearing, hearing only what we want to hear, and tuning out the rest? It’s a classic form of hearing...but not listening. Hearing is a matter of sound wave frequencies vibrating tiny bones in our inner ears that transmit signals to the brain through tiny nerve endings going to the brain, which then interprets those signals. If everything’s intact, we hear sounds and are able to interpret them. But if those inner ear bones, or the nerves, are damaged, or deteriorated, an unable to respond properly to sound wave frequencies, sound is distorted so we no longer “hear” well, if at all.

People may be more discerning of certain sounds than others, like mothers able to distinguish their child’s cries among other sounds, or hearing our name called in a noisy crowd. Loudness, speed of talking, and body language lets us “hear” beyond a person’s words. We hear many sounds around us at any given point in time, but filter out the noise from sounds that have meaning to us. We may be sleeping soundly, not hearing a TV left on, but wake up abruptly to an alarm clock.

While the human ear only hears a limited range of frequencies, animals have greater ranges of frequencies they can hear. Animals can even see by hearing, emitting sounds that are reflected back and interpreted. even in total darkness. Bats, for example, send out sounds that are reflected back and “heard” enabling them to determine the location and distances of objects. Deaf people read lips or understand sign language, enabling them to “hear” by sight.

So hearing is about receiving and interpreting the many sounds around us. Unless those sounds are somehow blocked before reaching us, we can respond to them. Selective hearing then is the ability to block out, or ignore, certain sounds. It’s most likely a term used to complain about being ignored by another.

Listening, however, is a very different matter. It takes focus, paying attention, to fully understand what is being heard. Effective communication requires focused hearing and listening. You might be talking with someone, expecting them to be listening to you, but they hear certain trigger words that remind them of something that they must interrupt to relate. Or they’re so focused on preparing their response to something you’ve said, they quit listening. Or they’re just not interested, and quit listening .

The significance of all this is not about communications between humans, but rather to improve our listening to God. Many people complain that they can’t hear God speaking to them, even suggesting that God doesn’t even hear their prayers. Scripture throughout the Bible tells us very often that God does hear, and listens to our every prayer, even the foolish ones. But hearing Him, and listening to Him, are often different matters. Selective hearing even affects our listening to God. Choosing what we want to hear, blocking out His Word and His Voice at other times. People complain that since they can’t hear God, God must not be speaking to them. And that’s what I’ll be talking about, any you’ll hopefully be listening to, this morning.

God speaks to us in different ways. We tend to think of prayer as us telling God our problems and wants. But, let’s remind ourselves that prayer is also a means of hearing Him, listening for Him speaking to us. When you come to a railroad crossing, around the red lights on each side of the crossing, are the words, “Stop. Look. Listen.” I think that’s also a good reminder for us coming into prayer. We have a tendency to begin our prayers by speaking, when we should instead be preparing to be in a listening mode, focusing on being in God’s Presence. So, we need to first Stop! Think about what we’re doing: coming to the Almighty, the King of Creation, who loves us and wants to help, but not as our servant patiently waiting to serve us.

The second warning is to Look! This would be important if we were concerned about the danger of an approaching train at a railroad crossing. Applying this to prayer, though, while we’re stopped, calming our soul, we should be looking for God’s Presence around us, preparing to communicate with Him as a friend, remembering all He has already done for us. Our Call to Worship is an example of seeing images of God’s presence from the 23rd Psalm and John 10, where Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd. We see the images of our Good Shepherd calling us, His beloved sheep, by name, leading us to green calm pastures, and refreshing, still waters, His peace calming our souls. Sometimes when we pray, we may have urgent worries and fears that have our immediate attention. Then remembering His reassuring promise that even when we walk through dark valleys, He’s with us, defending and comforting us in those dark times. The psalms are filled with images of lament, fear, praises, and questioning, that may also help us identify strategic similarities.