Can You Hear Me Now?

by Victoria Gaines
Published August 1, 2007

"There is probably no service we can render other persons quite as great or important as to be listener and receiver to them in those moments when they need to open their hearts and tell someone their story." ~ Thomas Hart

Several years ago, I stumbled across a wonderful little book at the local Goodwill. For 50 cents, The Normal Christian Worker by Watchman Nee helped change an area of my life.

Nee’s little book stresses Christian characteristics necessary for ministry and everyday life. He touches on diligence, stability, discipline, faithfulness, restraint in speech, and being loyal to truth. But the chapter on being a good listener hit me between the eyes.

Sometimes I hear with my ears, but not my heart.

Have you ever poured out your thoughts to someone only to realize later that they never quite heard you? Few people listen well. It's easier to dispense platitudes, nod, or interrupt with our own stories before the other person has a chance to share their burdens. But listening is the best gift we could ever give a friend.

When someone turns to us for help, Nee says we need to discern three things:

- the words being uttered
- the words the person is holding back
- the words he cannot utter that lie in the depths of his spirit.

Listening is not easy. Things distract us. And so we want to keep a quiet heart before God and call on the Holy Spirit for discernment. It’s also another area we must die to self.

Yes, sometimes we grow weary of laments. Maybe we’ve been there, done that, and blurt out what we think a friend needs to know. Or we don’t understand the grief journey, so we recite scriptures, or better yet, offer another book to read. Like our dear husbands, we sometimes try to fix a problem before we fully understand it.

"Or from the very outset we pay scant attention to what they say to us, because we are so impressed with the importance of what we have to communicate to them, that we are just waiting for an opportunity to break in and take up the role of speaker again, hoping, of course, that they will prove good listeners," writes Nee.

We’ve all done this. But we can serve the God we love by learning to listen well.

Let’s pray for loving, compassionate hearts. Sometimes the only thing I can offer a friend is a hug and my tears. But Jesus ministers through gestures of compassion. Listening from the heart fosters not only growth in ministry, but in friendships, marriages, and the relationships with our children.

The quote from Nee that nailed it for me was this:

"Our hearing is not sufficiently acute. If we cannot hear what people have to say to us, how can we hear what God has to say?"

To listen better, Nee does not leave us clueless:

• We must not be subjective. Subjectivity is one of the main reasons why people are bad listeners. Sometimes we’re so set in our own notions that other opinions cannot penetrate our thinking. “We must ask the Lord to save us from this subjectivity.” Let’s pray that He will enable us in all our contacts with others to set aside our own prejudices and our own conclusions and allow Him to instruct us.

• We must not wool-gather. “Many believers know nothing of mental discipline...when people talk to them they cannot follow what is being said, but can only follow the train of their own thoughts and talk of the things that are preoccupying them.” We need to quiet our minds so that we can take in what is being said to us.

• We must learn to enter into the feelings of others. Even if we listen to what a person says, we won’t be able to understand his need unless we enter sympathetically into his circumstances. “If your emotional life has not been dealt with by God, when others express their joy, you will be unable to break through with a glad response, and when they express sorrow, you will be unable to share their grief.”

For the sake of Christ, we become servants of others instead of indulging in our own feelings all the time.

May the Lord change the way we listen and why we listen. This happens only as we abide in Him. Then, when others come to us, His Spirit gives us the inner clarity to discern well and minister to the need at hand.

“…and to become good listeners the Cross will need to operate deeply in our lives to deliver us from the self-absorption that makes us deaf to the concerns of others. A deep work of the Cross in our lives will produce an inner quiet that will make us patient listeners.” ~ Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Worker

Lord, speak, for your servant is listening.

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