Hello
How are your communication skills – going great these days? Clear, sharp, empathetic and rewarding? Might I invite you to consider today’s Holy Nougat
“Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.” Proverbs 18:13 NLT
Too often, us humans are not good listeners. You know how it goes, we get the gist of what is said, and we are sure our mental predictive speech alert is on, so we opt to be the first voice out the starting gate. Major fail! We were way off base. Or, the person is speaking and, jumping to conclusions, we override whatever is being said by another, and we talk too quickly.
The fact is, speaking out of turn is so normal for some of us we may think it is a good thing. Usually, it is not. But those around us may be too polite to share their annoyance. And pretty soon, our thoughts are not welcomed, or we develop a reputation for abruptness, insensitivity or worse yet, we get cut off before we have even opened our mouths.
The examples I’ve offered may sound a bit extreme, but they are not too far from reality. And our penchant for not listening is hardly ever restricted to our inter-human interactions. We also do this with God. In fact, with God, our predictive (text) often resembles the response we Would like to hear from God. And we sometimes do cut God off mid-conversation, mid-response even, because we have heard what we think is salient (often not the case), and we are moving on to the next item.
If none of the above described you, awesome. Share the secret to engaging others ASAP, I’m asking for a friend. Otherwise, this may be the time to ask for God’s intervention in helping us to actively listen to God and also to others. Communication is a two way street, and requires effort, even on social media. I pray for grace to be actively engaged listeners.
In Christ’s love and grace . . .
