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Welcome to the Art of Spiritual Listening. I'm Family Life
Pastor Brent Kirby from the northern region of Alaska.
Today we're going to be looking at the Art of Spiritual Listening,
what it means to not only listen to each other,
but taking those tried and true techniques many that counselors use
and applying them, if we can, to the art of listening to God Himself. There are many
scriptures that talk about listening.
We won't be able to cover them all today, but we'll try.
I have twelve steps to present to you today.
In each one there's a basic side and there's also an advanced side.
When that technique starts to develop, we start to see the advanced
part of that technique come into play as well. Advanced doesn't mean that it's
necessarily harder,
but it does usually take more experience for it to be formed.
I call it the 12 steps. For some of us men
it's difficult to listen and maybe we need a 12-step group to help us get through.
Hopefully this will be a way to simplify
the biblical commands and the biblical mandates
for us to actually us listen. Listening.
Why is it important? What is the
purpose of listening? Well, there's two scriptures
that I'd like to reach you to start out. The first is Acts 17:27.
It talks about the purpose, "His purpose
[Jesus purpose] was for the nations to seek
after God and perhaps feel their way toward God
and find Him, though He is not far
from one us." This is the New Living that you'll be hearing today in
case you're wondering the translation. John 10:10
part B, Jesus says these words,
"My purpose is to give them a rich
and satisfying life." From those two verses we see
listening as important for two reasons.
First, listening is to seek
after God across the chasm between man
and God. In other words, were able to bridge that chasm
when we open our ears and begin to listen.
When we start to put in these 12 steps. Listening is
also the means, according to Jesus, of having life.
We can't know Jesus, unless we listen to who He is,
through the Bible, through His Word, and so,
let's look at that process itself. Romans 10:17 says,
"So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News
about Christ. How do we learn about Him? First,
comes the Word. Second, we then hear the Word
and from hearing the Word our faith is built.
So the end result of the funnel is that we
have increased faith. That is what listening can do.
When we hear the Word of Jesus,
we, in our faith, grow.
How do we do this? What are twelve ways that we can do this?
That's what I'm here to present to you today. Number one,
the first technique, to spiritually listen,
is to lean towards Him. Proverbs 3:5-6 says,
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend
on your own understanding." The basic
Part of this technique is to lean your heart
toward His heart. You're in the moment with Him
just as if you were listening to someone else, you lean yourself towards them
and show that interest in who He is.
The advanced part of this technique is to lean
our understanding away,
put it away, and to lean not on our understanding
but on His understanding of Himself. Looking at God's Word,
what does it say about who God is and to really rely upon that
to understand who God is. Our second technique,
today, is to keep open posture
open as in, maybe, physically,
our hands open such as this, or
open opening our heart,
and opening our mind to what he wants to say. Jeremiah 6:9-11
says, "Who will listen when I speak?
Their ears are close and they cannot hear
They scorn the Word of the Lord. They don't want to listen at all."
Hebrews 3:7-8, Hebrews talks a lot about listening,
in referencing the Old Testament, "That is why the Holy Spirit says,
'Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did
when they rebelled, when they tested me in the wilderness.'"
The basic fundamental level of this technique is to remain
open to His story.
What He wants to do in your life and what he is saying in God's
Word. The advanced part of this technique
is to learn how to soften our hearts,
in every way, every part of our hearts,
to let Him do that, to soften us so that we can just simply hear,
not to be like Pharoah in Egypt or
Israel who followed Pharoah's example and hardened themselves
and became what, in bondage because of it
but instead to soften ourselves just as we would if someone came
to us. We open our hearts and soften ourselves to them.
The third technique, maintain eye
contact. Maintaining eye contact, Hebrews 12:2 says,
"We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the
champion who initiates and prefects
our faith. II Corinthians 4:18A
says, "So we don't look at the troubles we can see now
rather, we fix our eyes on the
things we cannot see or that
cannot be seen. The basic
part at this level, this technique, the basic level
is to maintain our focus in the present,
as Jesus says. He says, "Let tomorrow take care of itself
each day has enough trials and troubles of its own.
I've talked to many people in hospice who this is their technique.
This is the way that they get through each day, otherwise the anxiety and anger would
be too much. The advanced part of
this is to be able to balance maintaining our focus
in the present but also having an eternal perspective.
If someone comes to talk to you about a trouble, realizing that
you are one piece of the puzzle in their entire journey of their
life and just listening itself could help them
through. It's the same with God,
realizing that, yes, He's doing things in
your life today, but He also has a long-term eternal
perspective that He wants you to eventually get to
that place where we have a faith that's strong in Him.
This leads to our next point, acknowledge Him.
Simply acknowledge God 1 Samuel 3:10
says, "And the Lord came and called as before,
'Samuel, Samuel!'" [and here little Samuel is as a boy]
"and Samuel replied, 'Speak
your servant is listening.'" John 13:15 says
"I have given you an example" [Jesus is saying this] "I have given you an example to follow,
do as I have done to you.'"
There's two ways to acknowledge God. The first
is acknowledging him through our voice saying as
Samuel, "Speak God, I'm listening. I hear you." here
Doing this through our prayers, "I'm here God. What do you want to say to me?"
The second is to acknowledge him through our non-verbal
actions. Just as if you're listening to someone who came for a
counseling session. You're nodding your head. You're saying, "Umm-Hmm" "Yes".
Those are the verbals but also giving non-verbals of
head movement, those non-verbals of leaning in toward them.
God wants us to do the same. He wants us
to not only hear Him but to do
action as well. To do something from what we're hearing
to show that we do hear
he's saying. The fifth,
is to ask questions. Ask questions of God.
Psalm 88:10. If we just look at Psalm 88 in general
we see the psalmist asking
questions of God. It's okay. It's okay to ask those questions.
God may or may not answer. He may give you an answer but it'll be
in the future but it's okay to ask those questions.
There's two basic, there's two levels to this. The basic level
is to ask closed-ended questions that end with an answer of
yes or no. Psalm 88:10 says,
"Are your wonderful deeds of
use to the dead? Do the dead rise up and praise you?"
Yes it's a rhetorical question but he's also
asking God a yes or no question showing that it is okay to
ask God. The other advanced technique in
this, in our relationship with God, is to ask Him open-ended
questions and in doing so, we're really
releasing much more power to God
over into His hands. An example would be
from Psalm 88:14 a few verses later
the Psalmist says, "Oh Lord, why do you reject me?"
"Why do you turn your face from me?"
At that time, the Psalmist is obviously feeling devastated and
is asking these tough questions, why.
What? How? When?
Open-ended questions that, have no just yes or no,
those are tough for us to ask of other people, and they're extremely tough for us
ask of God. Our last one we want to look at
in this Part 1 of this series, is to allow silence.
Similar to that.
Psalm 46:10A says, "Be still and
know that I am God." Proverbs 18:13 says,
"Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful
and foolish." On the basic level of
allowing silence with God is to
allow Him to break the silence first in your life.
Being silent before Him, calming your mind, and
allowing Him to speak when He needs to, or wants to.
On the advanced level, this actually looks
more like us not assuming that we know what He's going to say
or the answer He's going to give us and then interrupting Him
instead allowing that silence to persist.
Tough to do. Very hard, but these are six techniques that
we can start putting into practice, not only
in our relationships one-on-one with other people
but also in our relationship one-on-one
with God. And my hope is that in
practicing those techniques with God,
when we come face-to-face with people, whether it's one-on-one
or in a group setting such as in a Life Group or Small Group
that we would be able to have perfected
that technique with God so much we're able to do it with other people
and show them, by modeling, what it is that
they can have in relation with God.
I hope that this part one has really helped you. Look forward to part two soon, when
we'll cover the last six techniques of the Art of
Spiritual Listening. Thanks for joining me.