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At Become New, get 10 minutes of spiritual formation every weekday with John Orberg.
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We're learning not to condemn, just give it enough for a let.
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Now, when Sunday comes round, you can go back to them.
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But here's the words today, listen.
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And not just listen any particular way.
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This fascinating, Jesus says this in Luke 8 verse 18.
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Consider carefully how you listen.
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And it turns out there is a right way to listen, a good way to listen, a way to listen
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that leads to something much greater than just mentalism, superior to a condemnation.
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And then there is a wrong way to listen, just experience that quite recently.
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There's actually three wrong ways to listen.
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And we learn about that from a great psychologist.
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I'll start with this very often.
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We don't know what's going on with us when we're listening.
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We're not even aware of what's happening in our own spirit.
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This is from Deborah Tannen's wonderful book.
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You just don't understand women, men, and conversation.
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Shrides about a publicist listening attentively to a producer of a radio show, tell her how
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the studio had come to be built, where it was, why he would have preferred another site.
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What caught my attention, she says, was the length of time he was speaking while she was
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He was delivering a monologue, a lecture, detailed info about reception at the two sides,
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architecture, the station, so on.
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I later asked the publicist if she had been interested in the information the producer
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Oh, yes, she answered.
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And she found a moment and said, well, maybe he didn't go on a bit.
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The next day she told me, I was thinking about what you asked.
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I couldn't have cared less what he was saying.
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It's just that I'm so used to listening to men go on about things I don't care about.
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I didn't even realize how bored I was until you made me think about it.
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Listening and listening well and responding when people are being tedious.
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So it's actually a great art.
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Deborah Tannen writes here about how very often with men and women, one of the differences
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in communication styles is men tend to communicate in what she calls report to talk.
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I feel obligated to give a report to show my mastery, kind of boy culture runs that way.
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So it's often quite fatiguing.
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Women, she says, it can be stereotyped, but women often grew up in a culture where they
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So they learn to connect communication is stress relieving because it's connectional.
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That's why, for example, often she writes, women will say, yes, as a way of saying, I'm
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Men, when they say yes, tend to mean I'm agreeing.
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And so, of course, there can be a problem between the two of them.
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And then there's lots of other different differences in our styles.
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For example, she writes, Californians expect shorter pauses than many people from the Midwest.
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So in conversations between them, Californians end up interrupting.
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She writes, many Americans find themselves interrupting when they talk to Scandinavians.
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I'm a Scandinavian Midwesterner.
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My wife is a California American.
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So you might think that I would get credit for a list then really well, not at all.
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And quite frequent comment is, you don't listen and what I'm learning is in a real deep
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way, that's very true.
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And Nancy, I hope you're listening.
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Here's what I just experienced and this gets to the right and wrong ways of listening.
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So it's very fresh for me, I was just at an event, it was back east.
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And it wasn't at a church, so it wasn't a particularly religious event, but a pastor
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was asked to give the invocation to pray to start things off.
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Only when he got up, he did a little kind of mini sermon before he did the prayer.
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And because that's kind of my line of work, I was listening kind of critically, kind
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of thinking I would not do that.
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People don't want to hear you give a talk, you're just supposed to pray and sit down.
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There's a, I would do it.
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And instead he's doing this and I'm like timing him and getting frustrated and impatient.
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And then the thought came, I don't know quite how to articulate this, not that it was a
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voice from heaven, but it was just a thought, John, seek to listen to this and see, is there
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anything you can learn?
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Might God have something to say to me, do these words that can help me live better today?
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Like I brought God into that moment, into that conversation, and it completely changed
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the way that I listened.
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I went from listening, judge mentally, to listening to learn.
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And I remember years ago I was in a small group and it was led by Sister Jean who was kind
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of our spiritual guide, our spiritual director, and she said, now when we gather, everybody
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will have sometimes when they speak, it's tempting in a group to select who you're going
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to pay attention to and who you want to think.
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This person's really smart.
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That person's kind of slow.
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This person's important.
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I should pay attention to them.
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That person's kind of needy or they kind of great on me.
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She said, don't do that.
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Instead, assume God is at work in each other person as God is at work in you and listen
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to what God might say to you.
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So that's the invitation today.
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Only this word, Jesus is so brilliant in Luke chapter 8.
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Consider carefully how you listen and in any moment, listen to learn.
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God, what might there be that could nourish me, that could redirect me, that could guide
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How are you speaking to me right now?
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If I do that, if you do that, and there's a need for discernment, discernment will
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be given as you go along.
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If something's off, you'll be aware of that.
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But if I listen in order to pass judgment, then I will get neither learning nor discernment.
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And the great teaching on this also found in Luke 8 is, Jesus is sermon on the parable
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of the sower, the sower went to sow seed and the seeds of the Word of God.
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Now Dallas will have pointed out often we think about that just as like witnessing, telling
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other people about the gospel.
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But actually, this is a story for every moment of every day, always words are being
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Words are coming at us.
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And then Jesus talks about three of the wrong kind of conditionings.
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These are aspects of the wrong way of listening, because he keeps talking about hearing, those
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Some word he says falls on a path.
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Can baby rights about this?
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So this wrong way of path has been troddened down by people.
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And so that's hard soil.
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That's a hard heart.
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That's me thinking, I already know you got nothing to teach me.
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I want to take the position of judging what it is that you're saying that's listening
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And that's not going to be helpful to me.
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And then he says, some falls on rocky soil.
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Now the idea of rocky soil is not that there are a bunch of rocks on it.
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In the Middle East, often there's a thin layer of top soil on rocks.
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And that's the kind of ground he's talking about here.
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And I can listen with a shallow heart where I'm just trying to escape.
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I'm just trying to be distracted.
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I'm not really fully present.
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I'm just listening in a shallow way.
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And that's not going to be helpful.
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And then he talks about there's a third kind of person that listens.
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And initially that word comes in, but the cares of this world, deceitfulness of riches,
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the worries of life.
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In other words, this is cluttered soil.
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This is where my mind is so preoccupied that I'm unable to actually be with you and listen
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to you and ask God, what do you have to say to me through this person?
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But then Jesus says there is good and noble soil.
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And that's the person who hears and takes it to heart.
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So that's the invitation today.
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As you walk through the day, as I walk through the day, we will be, there'll be many words
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That's what the soar does.
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And from lots of different sores.
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And instead of thinking, okay, now I'm going to listen in order to pass judgment on somebody,
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I'm going to dismiss this person.
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I already know what's coming there.
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I don't need to pay attention to this.
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I said, listen to learn, today listen to learn.
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This is humble listening.
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God, what do you have to teach me?
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As I do that, if there's error or problems or something wrong, God will make that clear.
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But that's listening with a good heart.
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And that sets me up, see, when I do it that way, to listen beyond condemnation because
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my posture is just as God is at work in me.
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So God is doing something with this other person.
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He's concerned about this other person all the time.
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And God will have something for me to learn.
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Oh, what a good thing it is to live a life beyond condemnation.
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Hey, thanks for joining us here at Become New.
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My name is Tim, and I'm a part of the team.
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We'll see you next time.