LISTEN TO LOVE
Less talk, more communication
"For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you"
(Luke 6:38)
1. How hard is it to find someone who will really listen to you?
• Those of us who have identified with Jesus the Christ, have been taught a very special kind of love, which among other things, is a listening love.
• It’s not the kind of love that says "How can I use you for me, and how can I use you to give me pleasure and how can I use you to exalt me?"
• It is the love that asks, "How can I give of myself in order that you can be fulfilled?"
2. He didn’t like ’tall’ people.
The famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, designed some unusual buildings. On a university campus in Florida stands a library designed by Wright with an extremely low ceiling, so low that if you are six feet tall and not careful, you keep bumping your head. A man who was having this trouble asked why it was that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed such a building. And the answer was, "This is a characteristic of his architecture because he hated tall people."
• How typical this is. You try to cut the other fellow down to your size.
• You make him fit into your mold.
• Husbands and wives, parents and children and friends, remaking each other.
• This is the kind of love we express by taking the other and using him and carving him and shaping him into what we think he ought to be.
3. Agape Love of Jesus
But it is not the kind of love which the New Testament calls agape love:
• The love that is for the other,
• The love that affirms the life of the other,
• The love that rejoices in the difference in the other.
And it is also, a listening love.
• We talk too much--all of us--talk, talk, talk.
• Even when we’re not talking, we’re not listening.
• We are trying to think of what we’re going to say when the other person slows up enough for us to break in.
What a contrast to our Lord, who in all of history had more right to speak with authority than anyone else. Yet how often we find Him listening! He listened to Nicodemus.
4. Jesus Teaches Nicodemus (John 3).
Notice in our Lord’s exchange with Nicodemus how our Lord followed closely Nicodemus’ questions and concerns. Our Lord here demonstrates how He "focused" intently on the "other" person when speaking to them. He didn’t cut Nicodemus off; He didn’t get ahead of him; He didn’t try to "complete his sentences", etc. He "listened intently".
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
4“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
5Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
16“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
He knew what this proud member of the Establishment’s problem was from the beginning, but He listened. He heard him out. He listened to Peter, patiently, even when Peter was making a fool of himself. He listened to the woman at the well.
"The measure you measure with will be measured back to you," we read in today’s Scripture Lesson (Lk.6:38). If you want to be heard, you had better start listening.
5. Getting to know you!
Listening, after all, is the way to get to know another person.
• There is a quality of knowing in which you discover the other’s uniqueness--their strengths and weaknesses, their joys and sorrows.
• When you know something of the other, you can give of yourself in order to affirm his or her unique personhood.
But unless we listen we will never get to know. This is the tragedy of so many long-term relationships which remain untouched by love because people just don’t get to know one another truly.
6. Listening with Non-Verbals
Listen to this case history that appears in Dr. Paul Tournier’s book, "The Strong and the Weak." It is the story of a family in which there were father, mother and several children. The father had a problem with one of his daughters, a little girl who was very quiet, very shy, unable to express herself outwardly. The father was an outgoing person and most of the other children were too. And he was puzzled and bewildered and confused about this, but he tried to understand. On one occasion he gave his quiet little daughter a present. It was an elegant little glass elephant on a gold chain, to put around her neck. He put it down on the table in front of her and said, "I’ve brought you this present." Well, she was just overwhelmed! Her mouth dropped open and she stared at this beautiful, beautiful thing. As Dr. Tournier said, "It shone more beautifully than any star of Bethlehem because it symbolized her father’s love for her." She sat there for several minutes, staring at this thing, unable to speak. Then she got up and went into the other room to try to tell her mother what had happened. When she came back she was thunderstruck because she saw her beautiful little elephant dangling from her sister’s neck. The father said, in a kind of offhanded way, "Well, you didn’t want it so I gave it to your sister." Didn’t want it? He wasn’t listening! He wasn’t listening to the joy of her silence.
7. In therapy
He hadn’t listened enough to this child to know who she was and how she expressed herself. And years later she was in therapy, trying with her analyst to trace back to the tragic feeling she had that no one was listening down through the years.
8. We don’t know one another
Even in the family we don’t know one another because we’re not listening! One of the great joys of parenthood is discovering that every child is different and unique and unlike any other child, even in the same family. You can get to know the uniqueness of each child and identify with it, and call it forth and rejoice in it. But only if you listen enough to hear who the child is, to hear the life that is developing and trying to come through.
9. We communicate with more than words:
A. Some are very verbal. For various reasons they talk a lot.
• Some were never heard in the family of origin so now as adults they are making up for lost time.
• Some never grow up and like little children they demand to be on center stage where the world revolves around them. And, one way to do this is to demand center stage by talking incessantly.
• Some cannot stand silence not even a brief pause in communication so they keep the conversation going and it is usually filled with a lot of their talking.
B. Some are very visual.
• Their brain creates pictures for just about everything.
• And, those pictures are very important to these people. In purchasing a car, it is the appearance of the car that will grab their attention, not Consumers Report on the car or how the car feels or sounds.
• In communicating with a "Visual" you must use visual words such as "looks", "clear", "any color", etc.
C. Some are very feelers.
• As the name indicates, this kind of person has to "touch" the car to feel the finish and the seats; they have to drive the car to get a "feel" for how it handles.
• Listen, a person who is a high feeler, you must make them "feel" good.
• Use language that makes them feel good. "I know that you don’t feel like doing your homework but you may wish to feel the burden of going into adulthood ill equipped to do a job that pays a livable salary."
D. Some are very aloof - they live out yonder somewhere dissociated from the present scene.
• They have learned that by "going elsewhere in their mind", they can have much more control over their emotions.
• Many of this type have shut down their feelings. They are the "Mr. Spocks" of the world.
• I suspect that the girl in the Case Study was more of this type. She was a very quiet girl.
The secret is to discover how the other person primarily communicates and "listen" to their communication both verbal and non-verbal.
It is impossible not to communicate. We cannot not tell our story. And, to not to talk is to communicate just as talking is a means of communicating.
10. Listening is a way of affirming the other’s real worth as a human being. Did you ever think of this? When you care enough to be there and to give your full attention and to listen, you are saying, "I care about you as an individual because I respect your integrity as an individual. You are a person."
11. “Mommy, she thinks I am real!”
The story is told of a grandmother, a mother and a little boy--three generations--who went into a restaurant and sat down to order. The waitress took the grandmother’s order, the mother’s order, then turned to the little boy and said, "What would you like?" The mother immediately said, "Oh, I’ll order for him." This is typical and necessary in many cases. But the waitress, without being overly rude, ignored the mother and said again to the little boy, "What would you like?" Glancing over at his mother to see how she was reacting to all of this, the boy said, "A hamburger." "How would you like your hamburger--with mustard and pickles and the works?" asked the waitress. And with his mouth dropping open in amazement now, he said, "the works!" She went over to the short order window and she hollered the grandmother’s order, the mother’s order, then in a very loud voice she said, "And a hamburger with the works!" The little boy turned to his mother in utter astonishment and said, "Mommy, she thinks I’m real." This is what happens when we listen to other persons. They suddenly become real. They realize that someone cares enough to recognize their unique worth as human beings.
12. The tragedy of not listening
I want to close now by reading a letter. Here is a modern example of the tragedy of not listening, a modern example of the measure you measured with being measured back to you. In this particular case it’s a college girl pleading with parents to listen. But I think I have already said enough to indicate that it has to work both ways. This just happens to be an example of a young person pleading with us to listen, and it summarizes what I have been trying to say. "Dear Sir," begins this letter to the editor of "Time" magazine, "Thank you for your recent article on being an American parent. How I wish every parent and future parent would read it and take it to heart. I love my parents and I know they love me, but they’ve ruined my life. Your paragraphs under ’listen’ very well sum up what I am trying to say. I could never tell my parents anything. It was always, "I’m too busy. I’m too tired. That’s not important. That’s stupid. Can’t you think of better things. Your friends are wrong. They’re stupid." As a result, I stopped telling my parents anything. All communication ceased. Oh, we had love prompted on my side by an ever present fear of my mother. And prompted on their side by the thought that I was their responsibility. And if I went wrong they would be punished by God. After four rotten years in a girl’s school (I did have two or three wonderful teachers), I’m now stuck in an even worse woman’s college. Only the best for me. They knew I didn’t want to come, but they made me anyway. Their daughter wasn’t going to be corrupted. I had already been saved from the evils of early dating and from doing the things ’everyone else did.’ What is the result of this excellent upbringing? I’m eighteen years old. I drink whenever I get the chance. I have smoked pot and I am no longer a virgin. Why? Was it my parents or just me? I’m so very confused. But who can I talk to? Not my parents. My parents could read this letter and never dream it was their daughter. I have only one important plea to parents: listen, listen and listen again, please. I know the consequences and I am in hell."
Jesus tells us to be compassionate, not to judge, not to condemn, to pardon--even to love our enemies. But none of this is possible if we are not good listeners. Husbands, wives, parents, children, friends and races--listen, listen and listen again! Listen to love!"
Author Unknown
