Intro:
I would argue that one of the, if not THE, most essential skills we need to learn today, which will have the greatest impact on improving our relationships, is a skill you might be able to figure out from the title I have given to today’s message: “Those Things On The Side Of Your Head Are For More Than Just Holding Up Your Glasses”. I want to talk about communication today, specifically the skill of listening, and to introduce this I thought I’d turn to a classic old comedy sketch perfected by Abbot & Costello sketch from the late 1940. “Who’s on First” from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Watf8_Rf58s (5mins).
Bridge:
This spring we’ve dived into the area of building skills into our lives that will improve our ability to be in healthy relationships. We’ve talked about a desire to really deeply live, about repentance, and last week about mutual “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” as commanded in Eph. 5:21. Today (and possibly next week) I want to narrow in on some really practical skills in communication. We’ve just seen a little bit about how it can be frustrating when we are not communicating clearly, so my goal today is to help us learn a few things about being better listeners. And since the series sub-title is “Relationship Skills from the Bible for Today”, let’s start with Scripture. Does it have anything to say about listening?
Scripture:
Yes. A lot, actually. We must remember that our Scripture documents are at least 2000 years old. This is before 3D video, before HD video, before the time when one could google “who’s on first” and watch 20 different versions instantly and then play them back on your iPhone projected and amplified as a sermon intro. Our Scriptures come from a time and a culture when even recording things in writing was sparse and expensive, and reserved for only the most important things. Back then, people had to simply listen. They needed to listen in a deeper way than we feel like we need to, since it is so easy for us to record and save. I believe they were much better, much more practiced, much more skilled at listening and remembering than we are, out of sheer necessity and practice.
There are a lot of passages about listening – listening for God like Elijah on Mount Horeb when God wasn’t in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but rather in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19); or listening like the boy Samuel who was woken by the voice of God calling to him in the night, at first mistaken for Eli (1 Sam 3) but soon discovered to be the voice of God. There are many commands to listen, many examples of God listening to His people, of God’s people listening to Him, and of God’s people not listening. Jesus spoke a lot about listening in the context of His parables, when He often concluded with the phrase, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear”. In John 10, Jesus says His true children are like sheep who know their master’s voice, because they have listened. Timothy warns, “For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3). It is in Revelation also, where the call to “listen” concludes each of the messages to the seven churches in chapters 2-3. But the Scripture I think is most clear from the skill perspective is this:
James 1:19-25 (NLT):
“19 Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. 20 Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. 21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.
22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.”
My familiarity with this passage is mostly from the teaching about anger and obedience, but at the heart it is really about listening, and it contains the essence of the art of listening: listen before you speak, and act on what you hear.
The passage is really so plain, so straightforward, that I don’t need to explain or interpret it for us. We just need to accept it. “You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak… don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.” This is James – blunt, to the point, clear and simple.
Listening Today:
When I take a Scripture like that and bring it into our culture today, I see we need some work on this skill. The good news is, like all skills, this one can be (and needs to be!) learned – with a little help and a little coaching around the central, Biblical command, we can do it. That is what I want to spend the rest of this morning on – learning how to listen.
And in the spirit of James, I want to be blunt and to the point in naming what I believe is our biggest problem with listening today: it is our self-importance. See, we think it is about us, we think that our perspective needs to be shared, our anecdote heard, our feelings spoken, our need met, and this, as we can plainly imagine, makes listening to others very difficult. If we care more about what we think than what someone else is telling us, we will not be good listeners. The same thing happens on the negative, if we are insecure in the conversation we are still making it about us, what we are going to say or how we are going to be perceived, and again, this makes us really bad listeners. Because the heart of listening is being able to shelve, pause, or set aside ourselves in order to really hear the person (or God) who is speaking. And then respond and interact to what is REALLY being said. As a result of this perspective most of us continue to hold, that the way to live is “me-first”, I believe that most people spend the time while someone else is speaking to them NOT listening but rather thinking about what they are going to say next. And this causes a lot of problems…
A Real Simple Overview of Basic Communication Theory:
One of the things I try to teach couples, either during marriage preparation or when trying to help them through some difficult patches in their relationship, is the skill of listening. The same skill applies in the other areas of life also – parenting, employment, even being a good friend. So let me teach you what I teach them – a very simple overview of basic communication theory. I like to do it with a simple picture.
It begins with two people, we’ll call the first person the “sender” of the message and the second person the “receiver”. Now the sender has an idea, a feeling, a fact, or whatever which they want to communicate to the other person – we’ll call that “x”. Now, the very simple goal of communication is to share “x” with the other person, and we want what the other person has in their head at the end of the conversation to be as close as possible to what the sender was thinking – AND for the sender to know that the message has been heard clearly and properly (SPECIAL NOTE – that second part is where we almost always fail).
Now, the sender has to translate the idea or feeling into words. This sounds basic, but as we have all experienced it can be difficult to find the best words to describe that “thing” we really want to communicate. And then we encounter the major barrier, which we call “filters”. These consist of all of our life experiences, our beliefs, our culture, and our personality. And what we all do when we are “senders” is we adapt, change, and “filter” the message we are sending based on all of those past experiences, beliefs, culture, and personality. For example, if the sender is feeling disappointed and needs to share that feeling (that is the “x”), he or she will try to find words but will naturally filter those words based on what has happened previously when he or she has tried to share disappointment – if they got in trouble, were labelled a “complainer”, experienced rejection, or were told it was their own fault, that is going to seriously filter the message.
Next the message is transmitted through what is called the “medium”. Is it a verbal message, and if so is it over coffee in a public place or in the privacy of home where one feels free to get mad and yell. Again, this really impacts the message. It could be written like a letter or email, it could be sent via text message, or it could even be a non-verbal communication like a certain look – like a really genuine, welcoming, encouraging smile. Moving on, the same factors exist on the receiving end. We get another set of filters coming into play here, same as on the other end, and continuing the example of the sender trying to communicate a message of disappointment we can see how those receiver filters will kick in differently if they are being told that the sender is disappointed with them or if they are being told about the sender being disappointed in someone or something else – the difference becomes clear quite quickly. Once through the filter, the receiver hears the words, but do they have the same meaning, the same nuance, the same connotations to the receiver as they did to the sender who chose them? We are not sure… which is why the next step in listening is so important.
It is here that James’ command comes into play: “You must all be quick to listen and slow to speak.” It is here that our self-importance tries to take over. It is here that most often we fail in listening because the receiver of the message now jumps in, assuming that what they heard is what the sender was really trying to say (most often, it is not really accurate) and takes over the role of “sender” because they want to send their own message in response. This is the wrong thing to do. Instead, the skill of listening needs to be exercised, and here is how it works. The receiver needs to reflect back what the message they are hearing is and find out it that is what the sender is really trying to communicate. We need to stay as the “receiver”, and check back to discover if our “x” corresponds to their “x”. This is simple to do once we decide to put the other person first and ourselves second. Practically, we do this simply by saying something like, “so I think I’m hearing you say “blah blah”, am I hearing you right?”; or, “I’m hearing you say you feel really disappointed, is that correct?” The skill is called “active listening”, and again it begins by choosing to stay with the other person’s message, check back and clarify and really try to understand, BEFORE responding.
This is absolutely critical, I can’t emphasize it enough. Listening means doing this second step. In this simple diagram, the message goes through 6 hurdles, how close is it really going to be when it arrives to what was really in the mind and heart of the sender? When we check back and verify before responding with our own message, we not only make sure what we are hearing corresponds as closely as possible to what is being said, we (more importantly) communicate value, respect, love, and we show that we are receiving the right message.
Assignment:
Your assignment this week is pretty obvious – practice your listening. When I am teaching this skill to couples, I actually make them take turns and I lay a ground rule – the “receiver” is not allowed to respond or react with anything other than those “active listening” messages until the “sender” can say, honestly, “I feel like you have really heard and understood what I am trying to say.” Sometimes I jump in and stop them from responding or reacting, and I say, “first, tell them what you think they are saying”. Gentlemen, we especially need to practice this in our relationships so my challenge to you is especially urgent, and if you want a greater challenge then listen not for the facts, which are relatively easy for us to hear, but really listen for the emotion being communicated and reflect that back in your active listening, by using phrases like, “wow, it sounds like that made you feel really frustrated, am I hearing you properly?”
Conclusion:
Let me wrap up with a story to help illustrate, because I had to learn some of these skills through trial and error. I remember a time, early in my marriage to Joanne, when she came home from the lab where she worked as a scientist needing to talk. There had been an “incident” with a colleague… So my wife comes home to her husband – a trained listener, a pastor by profession – and begins to tell me what happened. The conversation goes something like this:
“Hi dear, how was your day?”
“Rotten.”
“Really? Oh no. What happened?” (so far, I’m doing ok don’t you think?)
“I worked all morning to set up my xxxx so I could yyyyyy and it was a ton of work and I had to run some tubes over to the sink so I taped them up to the top of the bench and then along the floor and I made sure they were safe by taping them down the whole way so no one would trip over them and then “George” (name changed to protect his identity) ripped it all up when I left for lunch and when I came back all my stuff was gone and I’m so mad at him and I don’t know what to do.”
(Now, here is where I blew it. I heard “I don’t know what to do”, and decided I could be helpful… I could tell her what to do! I’m a guy, I fix problems, I can help!! Except I forgot to listen…) “He did what? You don’t have to put with that kind of garbage! I’ll tell you what to do, you walk up to him tomorrow and you let him know that you aren’t going to put with that, he has no right to do that, and then you make him reset your experiment back up.”
Does anyone see the problem? Can you imagine the rest of the conversation?? You probably can, because you’ve probably experienced similar ones: she responds with more of the story and how she feels angry and frustrated; I respond with more solutions; she gives me some reasons why my solutions aren’t very good (because, remember she never asked me to solve her problem, she just needed me to listen and understand her problem); I get defensive and upset that she is rejecting my ideas; she gets upset and hurt that I’m not listening and understanding; and it ends up in one of those fights that no one really understands what the fight was about but we sure all feel upset about it.
Sound familiar? The problem, quite simply: I didn’t listen. I should have, right after the first part of the story, said something like; “wow, that sounds really frustrating.” And then let her talk more about how she felt. And then I should respond again with an active listening skill, “did you feel like he didn’t respect you as a scientist and an equal?, I think that is what I’m hearing you describe…” And when she has said what she needs to say, she might ask me if I have any ideas… and if I’ve really listened, I’ll have a lot better ideas!
This, I think, is what James means when he commands, “You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak”. I hope you can learn a few things from my mistakes as you practice listening.
