Sirach 6:33 “If you are willing to listen, you can learn; if you pay attention, you can be instructed.” This episode talks about how important it is that we are willing to not only listen, but listen well. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Having A Willingness To Listen
Sirach 6:33 “If you are willing to listen, you can learn; if you pay attention, you can be instructed.”
This applies to all areas of our life. You may be listening to this and think that this episode won’t apply to you because you are not at school, or you are not at work and so you don’t need to learn or pay attention to anything. You have spent your life learning and now you want to just relax and enjoy retirement. Or maybe you just finished school and now you have started working and you figure your time for learning is over. I assure you, no matter what stage of live you are in, the verse if for you. Learning is something that we do every single day, whether we want to or not. The only question is what are you learning?
I believe that most of the conflict and confusion in the world today is because we don’t listen well. It seems to me if someone starts talking about something that we don’t know anything about, we might listen for a few minutes, but then we may start to tune them out. If someone starts talking about something that we disagree with we tend to get upset or angry and we stop listening and start formulating in our mind what we are going to say back to this person. We start building our defense before we even know what it is they are going to say. This verse says, “if you are willing to listen, you can learn.” It doesn’t say that if you are willing to listen you will suddenly agree with what the other person is saying. It says you will learn. If we aren’t willing to hear the other person then we can’t understand where they are coming from, what they actually believe, and why they believe it. We will stay divided if we can’t learn to listen to what the other person is saying and learn what they believe.
This applies to work situations as well. If you go into a situation or a job and you think that you already know it all then you will have a hard time hearing what your boss is saying to you when he is trying to help you learn. Also, it doesn’t just mean that we need to be willing to listen when someone is saying something that we want to hear. It also means we need to be willing to listen when someone is saying something that is hard to hear. For instance, if someone we work with is critiquing us on our work, we can tend to get defensive and not listen to what they have to say. However, if we can be willing to listen, we can perhaps learn to do it a better more efficient way.
I think if we were all able to think of this verse when we were receiving criticism, I think we would all learn so much more. Often times we hear someone telling us how we might be able to do something better and instead of listening to what they are saying our mind starts telling us a different story. While the other person is talking we start thinking to ourselves, “They think they know everything. Of course they think their way is better, they think they are perfect. They are telling me that my way is wrong and I know that it isn’t. Why is there way better than my way…” And because our brains start doing this, we are actually not even listening to what the person is saying. We totally missed what they said. They probably explained why they thought this other way was better. They probably even said that your way wasn’t wrong, they just thought this other way might save you time. If we are willing to listen, we can learn. If we can try to view criticism as a way to help us grow and improve rather than viewing it as an attack on us, we will learn a lot more.
This also applies to us in our home life and all of our relationships. I have heard so many people say they wish their spouse, kids, family, or friends listened more. I don’t know how it is in your house, but I know in my house we could avoid most arguments if we listened to each other more. Often times we know what we think and what we want and so when someone says something that goes against one of those two things we don’t want to listen. We think we know best as a wife, a husband, a mom, a dad, a son, a daughter, a friend, it doesn’t matter our role, we always think we know best and when someone challenges that, we are not willing to listen. Also, when we do listen we are not really listening with an open mind. We all have our own agenda and although sometimes we might be able to listen with an open mind, we don’t do it all the time. I am not sure if I even do it most of the time.
If we are willing to listen, we will learn. This is so powerful if we can just remember it. How many parents wish they knew their kids better? How many parents are willing to take the time to listen to their kids? Not just listen to the kids when they need them to do something or they are arguing with them, but taking time to sit down with then and ask how they are doing. Also, how many of us are willing to listen to our friends or family talk about things that we are not interested in? Maybe your spouse loves football and you don’t. You are not interested in it and you don’t know anything about it. What if you were still willing to listen to him/her talk about it? How different do you think your relationships would be if you took the time to listen to those you love talk about things that you weren’t interested in?
I remember when I read this in one of the many parenting books I read over the years I was not a fan. I was not interested in listening to my children talk about video games that I didn’t understand anything about. However, once I started doing it, I was amazed how much my relationships improved just by doing this simple task. It was so easy. I was intentional about talking to each one of my boys about whatever they wanted to talk about. If it was a video game that I knew nothing about I would ask them to explain it to me. Seeing their face light up when I asked them to explain it to me was priceless. Those that you care about want to share their passions with you. You will be surprised how much closer you will grow to them just by showing the slightest interest in their passions. I am not talking about taking on their passions as your own, or spending hours talking about things you have no interest in. I am talking about a 10-20 minute conversation about whatever they want to talk about, whether you are interested in that thing or not.
I was listening to a coaching sessions from one of my mentors Brendon Burchard yesterday. The coaching session was on how to have better relationships. He said that one thing every relationship needs if it is going to stay vibrant is novelty. He said that he is known for always bringing up a new topic of conversation with his friends. They will all be sitting around the table and he will just throw out a topic that either he knows nothing about, or that they haven’t talked about before and he will get a new discussion going. For instance, he doesn’t have kids so he might say, what are the top 3 things you would tell a new parent. Or he might say, I don’t know much about this thing or that and then ask what everyone else knows about it. He tries to generate conversation and he is willing to listen so that he can learn.
This verse also applies to our prayer life. If we listen to the Lord, we will learn. This is probably the most important. Are we willing to the listen to the Lord? What about when He is telling us something that we don’t want to hear? What about when the Holy Spirit is gently convicting us about something that we need to change? Are we willing to listen and to learn? The Lord will direct our steps, if we listen. The Lord will help us achieve all that we want in life, but only if we are willing to listen. The Lord is always talking to us, we just aren’t always listening. Actually, many of us are rarely listening. As we head into this new year, maybe we can make that a goal for 2022. I will be willing to listen so that I can learn. I will be willing to listen to the Lord, even when I don’t want to. I will be willing to listen to my loved ones, even when it is hard. I will be willing to listen with an open mind and not take it personally. I will be willing to listen so that I can learn.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you open our ears so that we may listen more. We ask that you open our hearts and our minds so that we may have a greater willingness to listen. Lord, help us to be open to take criticism as a learning experience and not as a personal attack. Help us to want to talk with our loved ones about whatever they want to talk about. Help us to put our phones, computers, or any other distractions down when we are talking with people. We want to be willing to listen so that we can learn. Help us to do this Lord. Thank you for all the ways you help us all day, every day. We are so very grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!