Monday Looking at it simply, God gave us two ears and one mouth, so His obvious input would be for us to listen twice as much as we speak. But good communication skills result not only from listening more than we speak, but more importantly on listening well. Many times we listen poorly. We may ignore our friend, or perhaps we just pretend to listen. If we listen at all, we listen in order to reply. We’re constantly evaluating and interpreting what others are saying, filtering what they are saying through our own perspective and experience. We’re preparing to jump in and advise our friend at the earliest opportunity. We may practice selective listening – again, just waiting for our chance to break in. Our poor listening skills are akin to going to the optometrist, and before we tell him our problem, he whips off his glasses and says, “Here, use these. They’ve worked well for me for many years.” We wouldn’t go back to that eye doctor. Do you listen well? Do people seek you out to listen to their problems? Read: Proverbs 1:8, 8:33-34; Tuesday Abraham Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” When we listen poorly, we’re preparing ourselves to foolishly advise the one we’re listening to. Interestingly, we study three of the four communication methods intently in school – reading, writing and speaking. But listening, for some reason, gets short shrift. Unfortunately, many couples don’t begin learning good listening skills until they find themselves in front of a marriage counselor. A listening technique that’s usually taught is reflective listening, sometimes called active listening. With this technique you repeat back what the speaker just said. It forces you to at least listen to what’s being said. But this technique can make the speaker feel insulted or mimicked if the intent of the listener is to control or manipulate. We must learn to listen with the sincere desire to understand if we hope to gain the trust of the one who is speaking. Do others trust you with their inner selves? Read: Proverbs 1:5, 12:15, 18:13; Wednesday In his book, The Peacemaker, Ken Sande suggests five skills that will help us listen better. (1) Waiting. Develop a comfort with silence. You don’t have to fill every moment with words, so give other people a chance to compose their thoughts. (2) Attending. Be attentive. Avoid distractions. Focus on what is being said, not preparing your next statement or rebuttal. (3) Clarifying. Ask questions or restate comments. Reflecting. Rephrase or paraphrase what was said to see if you’ve understood, including the emotions you’re hearing, e.g., anger or frustration or sorrow. (5) Agreeing. Listen for the truth. Find something the other person has said with which you can agree. You don’t have to agree with everything, but acknowledging truth and identifying common ground will help build trust. When others share their problems with you, do you work to gain their trust? Read: Proverbs 15:31, 15:5, 17:10; Thursday It is important to consider to whom we are listening. Where do you invest your listening time? Where are your children investing their listening time? When you add up the hours in the day and consider who has the “microphone” during those hours, it’s easy to see that as parents, we’re lucky to get in a few minutes. Between work or school, television, radio and the iPod, we can see our listening time gets pretty crowded – and not always with the best input. Obviously we would do well to give attention to the One Who gave us life, and Who gave His life for us. We can trust God’s Word, the Bible, to accurately communicate God’s message to us. We can trust His Holy Spirit to breathe wisdom into our thoughts. But sometimes it’s not clear where a thought is coming from. That’s why we need to develop an ability to discern, to identify the source of ideas. Check out a thought or idea against God’s Word. Is it consistent? Consider, are you making time to listen to the most important people in your life? Are you spending enough time in God’s Word? Read: John 10:27; Isaiah 30:21; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 2:13-16; 2 Timothy 4:3; Friday One problem we can develop as Christians as we learn more about the Bible is that we get in a learning “rut” – we want to stay in school forever and not put action behind our faith. We attend endless seminars and weekends with great teaching without ever applying what we’ve learned. James warns us about this in James 1:22. I can deceive myself, thinking I’m this great Christian because I “know” so much. At the Cove we try to encourage developing your Christian walk – maturing as a Christian – by a balance of activities. In the weekend services and Life Groups we can learn about the Bible. In our quiet time we can study the Bible and develop our prayer life. And on a serving team, we can apply what we’ve learned. All these activities go hand-in-hand. We serve better because of what we’ve learned in our studies, and our studies are enriched because of what we learn from serving. Ask God how you can apply what you’ve learned about listening this week. Read: 1 Corinthians 8:1; Philippians 1:9-11; James 1:22; Devotions by Steve Hoye