Listen with Love
Scripture Reading - Isaiah 28:23 The Amplified Bible
Give ear and hear my [Isaiah’s] voice; listen and hear my words.
As we continue on our “Listening” series in this lesson we will emphasize what it means to “Listen with Love”. When we are thinking about “listening with love” it means that we have God’s Heart before we engage others and we keep God’s Heart while we are engaged with others. Yes, many people think that if they are saved they already have God’s Heart but that is not entirely true because when we become saved we have a new heart (spirit) from God but that is only the beginning. As Christians we must take this new heart from God and feed it a daily dosage of truth, righteous and love in order for it to develop and mature into God’s Heart. God’s Heart in general is at least twofold. Of course we (ihlcc) know we could never completely explain God’s Heart but we can take what God said in the Holy Bible and share that information with you. The first fold of God’s Heart is Love and because God Loves first then He looks, listens and acts next in that order. In 1 John 4:16 the Word of God says that “God is love” therefore love must be God’s Heart. Love must be developed to demonstrate the fruit of love – God’s Heart. When we say God is Love we are insinuating that this heart of love has the fruit of the spirit in manifestation as mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23, “. . . the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance . . .”. This means we have an obligation to grow these fruit until they are visible to both ourselves and others. Yes, the second fold portion of God’s Heart is a clear understanding of all things. Some would call this the mind of Christ as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 2:15. Thus, now you understand why an accurate teaching of God’s Word is so important. Yes, we (ihlcc) would venture to say, “How you hear is just as important as what you are hearing”. In other words your heart’s attitude is critical to fully (deeply, clearly) understanding what the speaker is saying. Remember, “listening with love” is not solely based upon what words are being spoken but also what their heart (the speaker’s) is projecting. If our listening is based wholly upon what people are saying we are in a vulnerable position to be deceived because certain people do lie. No, our faith friend, it is better to “listen with love” because “listening with love” entails listening with God. For sure, as long as the Holy Spirit of Truth is involved with your listening He will bear witness to the truth. This listening technique involves more of your attention and it is surely more time consuming but it is such a huge blessing it is worth it. For example, do you know the difference between truth and falsehood? Our answer should be yes, in Christ Jesus (in His Love and by His Truth). Can you accurately discern when something just isn’t quite right in a relationship? Our answer should be yes, in Christ Jesus. Can you sense in your heart when someone doesn’t want to talk with you? Our answer should be yes, in Christ Jesus. If that is the case you reached that conclusion by following the witness of your heart, thus you are already “listening with love”. In some of those cases you pondered what a person or even certain people were saying and it didn’t line up with God’s truth and love so it was easily discarded as false. Concerning our second example, when you knew in your heart that something wasn’t quite right in a relationship you could have used both words and the heart attitude of the people involved to notice something wasn’t right. This is “listening with love” because you are both hearing their words physically with your ears and measuring that with what you are hearing inwardly with your heart from their heart. In the third example, maybe no words where ever spoken to you personally but you knew in your heart that a certain person or a certain group of people would rather avoid you than speak with you face to face. Well, in that last example what do you do? Do you disregard their heart and force a conversation to figure out why? No, because if you do that maybe the reason is they might not like you. This could be truth but can you handle the truth without over reacting emotionally and mentally. The more gracious way to handle that type of situation is to honor their heart by moving away from them physically while still praying for them spiritually. Note: Typically, what you are praying for others you should also pray for yourself to help you better understand too. It seems whenever we (ihlcc) have done that (separate from those who don’t desire our company) our spirit will enlighten us on the situation such that we have both peace in our heart with a better understanding mentally. Yes, “listening with love” allows you to accept a truth that could severely hurt a young one in Christ Jesus. For example, if we (ihlcc) hear in our heart that so and so doesn’t like you we receive that word of truth because it is truth. Next, we examine our heart to see if it is something we said or if there is something we can do to change their opinion of us. Quite often, we don’t hear a lot about things we could have done differently so we give them their adequate space. It’s funny to say this, but they actually are blessed by our decision not to force conversation and in certain cases they have reached back out to us for conversation months or years later. However, in the cases where they never did come back to speaking terms with us, we are content in Christ Jesus to love them anyway without speaking words directly to them. This means we “listen with love” to what their heart is saying and meet them there on their terms, not ours. Yes, even the Holy Spirit won’t force His Awesome Presence upon those who admit they don’t want Him. Yes, God is a gentle God who never tries to force His Will upon anyone, even if they are in darkness and desire to go to Hell. Therefore, it is up to us to listen to each and every person closely with love by taking the necessary time to understand what others are really saying to us. Yes, word for word, heart to heart, attitude to attitude. This starts with the speaker and should transfer to the listener and conclude with God by having His Will prevail over all others. If this means not getting your way so be it. If this means the other person might not want to be your close friend so be it because “listening with love” is honoring others above yourself. In summary we are encouraging all people (and especially Christians) to “listen with love” because that is the only way you can really hear exactly what others are speaking whether good or bad. We all know in the final analysis evil words should be avoided, idle words should be minimalized and God’s good wholesome words should be magnified by both the speaker and the listener in Jesus Name. Amen!