HEARING AND LISTENING    Audio

 "Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening." 1 Samuel 3:9

 In the story of Samuel, hearing isn't Samuel's problem -- listening is. He can hear, but he can't listen. The boy hears and responds the best that he can, but he responds wrongly -- not because he hears wrongly, but because he doesn't listen.  In fact, he can’t listen, because he doesn't know how to listen. He lacks the tools to listen.

 We have a ministry in our congregation called Stephen Ministry. We have four people trained as Stephen Ministers at Holy Love.  Stephen Ministers have gone through 50 hours of training developing knowledge and skills to be Christian Care-Givers.   In training, we spend the most time on developing listening skills.  

Listening and hearing are not the same thing.  I had a teacher who used to say, “The Lord gave you one mouth and two ears so you could listen twice as hard as you talk.”  It’s great advice!

 For most of us listening is not something we do very well.  It seems so much easier to open our mouths than to open our ears; to assert ourselves through speaking than to remain relatively passive through listening.  But you see, that’s just it, listening is not passive.  We may think it is, but it is not.  Listening takes desire, focus, commitment and patience.  Listening is anything but passive. Listening is active!

 Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”  “Be still.”  He didn’t say, “Go to sleep and know that I am God”, but “be still.”  

 I want to take a few moments here to speak with you about listening: listening to others and listening to God.

 First, Listening to Each Other

 A telephone crises volunteer was on duty at home one evening.  While he was waiting for calls, he was watching TV.  The phone rang.  The woman on the other end of the line was depressed and needed someone to talk to.  They began talking, but the volunteer continued to watch TV out of the corner of his eye.  After a few minutes, hearing the TV in the background, the caller asked, “Are you watching TV?” The volunteer replied, “The TV is on.”  The caller asked again, “Are you watching TV?”   The volunteered hesitated and then replied, “Yes, to be honest, I am.”  Without saying another word, the caller hung up. 

 Listening requires desire, focus, commitment and patience. You can’t fake it.  Most people can detect very quickly a phony or superficial desire to listen.

Samuel heard, but he couldn’t listen because he didn’t know how.  He needed a mentor, someone to help him learn to listen.  So Eli helps fine tune Samuel’s ear to listen with a new perspective  – to hear; not just to hear God’s voice, but to distinguish and discern God’s voice from all the other background noises that clutter.

 Whenever I go into situations like a hospital call, a home communion, a situation of grief, a counseling scenario, I always pray the same prayer. I’ve have literally prayed this prayer thousands of times.  “Lord, help me to listen!  Help me to silence the voices from within and without that would distract me from being a loving, non-judgmental listener.  Help me silence any personal agenda that would get in the way of me listening to the sorrow and joy of the other.”

In Stephen Ministry we call listening sacramental – “sacramental listening.”  A part of what that means is that God’s healing and empowering grace often flows into a person life through loving listening.  People come and talk to me about all sorts of things.  It has never ceased to amaze me that the more I listen, the more resolution that seems to occur in other’s life. 

We hear, but we don’t listen for all sorts of reasons.  The main reason is we get distracted by so many things.

 We may get distracted by sociological noise.  We are in a different social place or economic place than the other, and we have difficulty connecting with him or her on the same level.

We may get distracted by emotional noise. We may be so stressed that there is no point in even attempting to listen or be in conversation.

We may get distracted because of intellectual noise. We so strongly disagree with what the speaker is saying that we simply shut down and refuse to listen further.

 We may get distracted by moral noise.  The other might reveal something that we would consider to be morally wrong, and at that point we turn them off.

 We may get distracted by our unresolved wounds.  Someone may say something that is interpreted as hurtful that hits a “hot button” inside of us.  The thing said may have been intentional or unintentional. Nevertheless, it touched a vulnerable place, pushed a hot button, hit a nerve, and the result is we stop listening and find ourselves on the defensive, no longer really hearing anything that is being said. 

Listening to others in a loving manner takes desire, focus, commitment and patience – ad a brutal honesty about the things that distract us from listening.  The point is that there is nothing wrong with our physiological hearing equipment, but there can be all these other distractions which prevent us from listening. 

 Second, Listening to God

 At first, Samuel mistook God’s voice for another.  He thought it was old Eli calling him.  He went to Eli three times, and finally old Eli realized something bigger was going on.  So, he gave Samuel instructions.  “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

 On the one hand, I believe I have “heard” God speak to me.  On the other hand, I have never heard any audible voice that is indisputably divine.

 After I graduated from college I was full time in Youth Ministry in a large mid-western congregation.  For a couple of years there were numerous voices encouraging me to go to seminary.  At first, I vehemently discounted those voices.  I did not, in any way, consider those voices to be a voice from God.  I really thought they were all deluded.  I did not want to go to seminary.  I could not see or conceive myself as a pastor.  I believed they were wrong.  I wanted to be a teacher or meteorologist.

 The other thing was I was filled with all sorts of inner distractions - the biggest being I was afraid.  The whole idea of the ordained ministry terrified me.  I had little self-confidence.  I had a huge fear of failure and public speaking. 

 But all of my resistance did not dim the voices.  I heard the voices, but I was not listening.  Finally I began to listen enough that I softened – a little.  One of my best friends said to me something I’ll never forget.  To paraphrase he said, “Joe, I know you have many doubts and fears about this whole idea of seminary and ordained ministry.  But Joe, you need to consider putting your fear on the back burner, and put trust on the front burner.”

 You see, before he spoke my friend had listened to me. He knew my doubts and fears only too well. He had credibility with me. So when he spoke the unadulterated truth, I knew it and I began to listen.  He squarely confronted me with my real reasons for minimizing the voices.  I was afraid, and knew that unless I put trust ahead of fear it would control me for the rest of my life in every decision I would ever make. 

 So, with a lump in my throat and a rock in my gut, off I went to seminary, and the rest is history.  But you need to know this: the lump in my throat and the rock in my gut often return, and I must, all over again for the umpteenth time, put trust ahead of fear.

 Did you know that, before anything, the Christian Faith is about God listening to us?  Maybe you’ve never thought about it that way, but I believe it is true.   God doesn’t shout at us in a voice so loud that it overwhelms us.  God doesn’t force his way into our lives with a battering ram.  But God comes as a baby, a child who lived a human life.  He shed all prerogatives of power and took the form of a servant and died on a cross.   He knows what it’s like to be a person.  He took into his own body the worst that humanity had to give – and yet, he never stopped loving, forgiving and inviting.   “Follow me” he invited the disciples, and he invites you.  “Feed my sheep” he challenged Peter on the beach after his resurrection, and he challenges you.  He has proven his credibility. 

 God first called you to be his person when you were baptized, and God has called you every day since - that’s a part of what your baptism means.  God never stops calling; never stops inviting; never stops challenging.  Like me, you have probably not heard the indisputable, audible voice of God.  But, I know you have heard God’s Word spoken to you in many credible expressions:  You have heard sermons; received the sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood; been issued invitations and challenges; read and discussed your Bible; heard the voices of brother and sisters in Christ encouraging you, admonishing you, guiding you, teaching you; challenging you to find life purpose in employing your gifts for the glory of God, the building of the kingdom of God and following the Lord Jesus.  I know you have heard the quiet voice of your own conscience, but be brutally honest and ask yourself, “What are the things that have kept you, at times, from listening, responding, and following?”  

 Eugene Peterson says, “Christian spirituality does not begin with us talking about our experience; it begins with listening to God call us, heal us, forgive us. “

Old Eli gave Samuel a simple prayer, "Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening."

 We would do well to make that prayer our own, beginning today and every day for the rest of or lives.