A study was done by the US Census Bureau which stated that the USA has the highest: divorce rate, percentage of single parent families, teen pregnancies, teen abortions and homicide rate IN THE WORLD!
The American family is in a lot of pain. People just up the street are in a lot of pain. Because of sin, every one of us is broken, everyone one of us dysfunctional. But that wasn’t the way God intended for it be when He created us.
God created us for community, to be simply relational with Him and with others. The Bible says that the first man and woman were “naked and unashamed.” They could connect at a level intimacy many of us will never experience.
In your notes you will notice a group of hearts that illustrate this connection. Because nothing was hidden man and woman were able to love God and each other in an atmosphere of complete trust. They were connected.
But sin caused the man and woman to hide from God and from each other and from themselves. And still today, people are hungry for intimacy, connection, belonging but are plagued with fear and shame. Why? Because we’ve lost the innocence and trust we once had with God. And whether we know it or not, we walk around relationally guarded, protecting, and hiding our deepest and truest thoughts and feelings from God, others and ourselves.
The next illustration shows how everything relationally is turned upside-down because of sin. The Open Area is small, there isn’t so much trust, but instead and beneath we have a Guarded Area then deeper a Hidden Area and even deeper an Unknown Area. Because we are broken and in pain, we spend much of time defending ourselves.
Where there are hidden hurts, we defend with anger. We withdraw when we have fears in our relationships and hide. We cover over our failures with humor, our weaknesses with addictions, and our need for love by staying away in our workaholism.
As I said, the American family is in a lot of pain. Every one of us is broken. We as the church of Jesus Christ have the greatest news ever given! As we reach out to others of our community in their pain; as we seek to become connected and bring connective chances to them it will require that we listen!
We have been talking about a “love blitz” on our community—going out to them, meeting them on their own playing field and talking to them, inviting them, interesting them in God, Jesus, and His family. We are in the midst of this plan looking ahead for a vision to reach new people for Christ! This will be a test of how willing we are to do whatever it takes to reach lost people for Christ! And we must be ready, willing and able to listen!
Jan was on staff with Athletes in Action. After attending a conference where the importance of listening to unsaved people was stressed, Jan and others were relaxing in the hotel whirlpool. Two adolescent girls joined them in the tub. One of the teens, named Brittany, began passionately telling her friend about an upcoming Wiccan gathering she was planning to attend. (btw, Wicca is religion which worships God and Goddess, finds spirituality in all of creation, believes the practice of magic and spells and seek to contact the spiritual world through any means.)
Jan says: Normally we would have tried to counter the girl’s ideas, but we decided to listen instead. I said something simple like, "Wow, you really sound excited about this!" This was all the encouragement she needed to launch into a five-minute explanation of why she was so attracted to neo-pagan rituals. The bottom line was that she’d had a really traumatic time in high school and the Wiccas accepted her. She said, "I’ve gone through so much crap just trying to make it through high school that I’ll probably be in therapy for the rest of my life!"
[Jan] tried to mirror back what she said with, "It’s hard for you to even imagine a future where you’d be free from all of the pain you’ve gone through." Jan said, “What came next completely floored me. With a film of tears starting to form in her eyes and with complete sincerity in her voice, she said, "Sometimes I wish I could be born all over again. I’d really like to start over from scratch." After a long pause, my friend asked if she would really like to be born again. "Yes, I really would," she said.
Here is a pattern then: PAIN > CONNECTION > HEALING > TRUTH > LISTEN
Simply being relational means simply being a listener...a good listener first and foremost.
My little girl has sat on my lap and when she has wanted to talk to me and doesn’t think I am listening to her, she has grabbed my face with her hands and turned it towards hers and then puts her face in my face and says, “Daddy, listen to me!” That is why today’s sermon is titled, “Give Them Your Face.”
Your face let’s people know if you are listening to them and where you are with what they are saying to you. If you agree, they can tell by the look on your face or if you disagree. You listen with your face in several ways: with your mouth, your eyes, your ears and your brain. How well do you think you listen with your face?
How do we listen with our mouth?
In two ways: by keeping it shut! And by how we arrange it when we listen. We can smile, we can contort it, or pinch it tight…these all communicate something when we listen. But also by not interrupting them or completing sentences for them
How do we listen with our eyes?
Turned towards them lets them know you are tuned in. You can communicate your emotions and reactions with your eyes and this is better than with your mouth, especially if you like to interrupt or finish sentences for them! But listening with your eyes also means you “see” what they saying with their body language as well as their words! Your eyes see the twitches and shrugs and their facial expressions and body language and non-verbals. Your eyes are looking for what is really being said.
How do we listen with our ears?
Ears are very helpful in listening! Sometimes, just the turning of your face to tilt the ear towards them, helps them to know you are making extra effort in trying to hear what they are saying.
Good listening is like tuning in a radio station. For good results, you can listen to only one station at a time. Trying to listen to my wife while doing a project is like trying to receive two radio stations at the same time—I end up with distortion and frustration. Listening requires a choice of where I place my attention. To tune into my partner, I must first choose to put away all that will divide my attention. That might mean laying down the newspaper, moving away from the dishes in the sink, putting down the book I’m reading, setting aside my projects.
How do we listen with our brain?
By not thinking about to what to say next, your brain listens intently and properly trained helps all of the other senses operate skillfully. Your thought patterns may cause you to want to become defensive (after 10 years of marriage I can tell you that is NOT helpful to your marriage! –I had to learn to cut that out to listen to Melissa more succinctly.) You need to train your brain to keep its opinions to itself! And to seek instead to understand fully what is being said before moving forward in conversation.
How will we ever be able to take the good news to people unless we have first listened?
I believe that the busyness Satan has our culture locked into is one of the greatest strongholds the church has to break free from! Busyness shuts down communication and has made the church poor listeners—if not even non-existent!
That needs to change! I think about Phillip here where the Holy Spirit spoke to him and said, RUN TO THE CHARIOT…STAND NEAR IT” and Phil did! He heard the man reading, and then asked a question, which he in turn listened to the answer to really hear what was being said! By the end of their time, Phillip had lead the Ethiopian to Jesus Christ in simple fashion. He gave the Ethiopian his face!
Listen to this pronouncement Aaron and the priest were to speak over the people of Israel by God’s own request: “This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” (Nu. 6:22)
David says, “God, you have said, SEEK MY FACE” and David called God the “lifter of his face”.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see dimly as in a mirror, but then (one day when we stand before God) we will see Him face to face! Paul speaks again in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. That glory we reflect is from God (whom we cannot see) and shines in the face of Christ (whom we can see) by the Holy Spirit in the church!
And when people hear good news of Jesus Christ after we listen to them, their faces will be lifted too! Lifted up to be able to call on Him! A blessing and a glory they have not known before will by grace be placed upon them and even though you may not know it, you have reflected God’s glory upon them! That glory is the grace that changes lives!
But that won’t happen if you do not go and listen first! Give them your face!
Paul said it this way to the Romans (10:14-15):
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
The pattern is this:
SENT > SPEAK > HEAR > BELIEVE > CALL ON
______> TRUTH> LISTEN> HEALING > CONNECTION
But how will this happen if we do not give them our face?
Simply relational means give them your face. Give your spouse your face. Give your kids and grandkids your face. Give your pastor your face. Give the community who is in pain your face!
A fellow pastor shared this incident that happened to him while he was ministering on a college campus in Minnesota. He said, “I had the opportunity to share the gospel with Glenn, a student and musician who sang and played his guitar in local bars and restaurants to help cover his tuition costs. While having lunch with him one day, Glenn related an incident that occurred while he was playing at a local eatery.
During a break from his set, a table of people invited him to join them. He did so, and they immediately surrounded him and began talking about Jesus. He recalled, "I finally just got up and left. I was so offended; we didn’t agree on one thing!"
Recalling our previous lunch conversations about religion and Christianity, I said, "Glenn, there is not much we agree on either."
I’ve never forgotten his simple yet profound reply. "Yeah, but you listen to me."
Let’s get out there and give them your face! LISTEN!
I have placed a tool for application in your notes. As your Pastor I beg you take it seriously. As we embark on 2007 as a new year, we will be planning ways to reach our community and the leadership of this church will move forward together and more than ever we need everyone to be good listeners! Give them your face!
