Learning to Listen
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
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Scripture 1 Corinthians 13:1 – 7
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Read more…
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poproski
Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope that whatever your plans for the upcoming weekend, you’re able to take a moment or two to consider the gifts God has provided. For those of you for whom it’s particularly difficult to identify any gifts or provision from God these days, I pray that God will make himself known in your struggle, and that you will experience his presence with you as the gift it is intended to be.
On Sunday we’ll be gathering for a worship service at 10 am (as is our practice). One of the things we do right at the beginning of our service, is spend some time listening to God through the words of Scripture. We hear a passage read aloud a couple times, listening for anything that grabs our attention or our imagination. We reflect on whatever it was that grabbed us, and ask God to help us understand what it is that he needs us to hear, and why.
I don’t know how others experience this time of contemplative listening, but I can tell you that in my experience it’s really hard to just sit and listen. It’s especially hard when it’s God to whom we’re trying to listen. We’re way better at talking. And I don’t think this is just true in terms of our relationship with God; I think it’s a pretty widespread general truth for all our relationships – for all our conversations, really.
In Chapter 2 of How to Revive Evangelism, the book we’re reading alongside our current sermon series, the Craig Springer makes this statement: “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.”[1]
That sentence leapt off the page when I read it. Its truth resonated deep within me. It reminded me of the Apostle Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. As I looked at all the descriptors included in that brief, overly-familiar passage, I was struck by the idea that listening well underlies every single one of them. I was also struck, not for the first time, by the idea that if we could just learn to listen well (to God, to each other, to strangers), we might actually be experienced as people who love like Jesus loved – people who truly do represent God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
As you prepare for Sunday, perhaps reflect on an experience from your own life in which you felt truly heard by another person. What was it that contributed to that experience? What did the other person do or not do? How does Springer’s statement quoted above resonate for you?
[1] Craig Springer. How to Revive Evangelism. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Reflective, 2021), 61.