Listening is Loving

But Micaiah said, “As the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says to me, that I will speak.” 1 Kings 22:14 (NRSV)

I don’t listen enough and I pride myself on being a good listening. In fact, I am a better listening than most people. Yet, I don’t listen enough. Like most people, I like to talk, I like to share my ideas, I like for people to be interested in me. When we talk we lose sight of who we are. When we don’t listen we often think of ourselves to highly.

We when don’t listen we tune out the voices of truth. We don’t hear what our friends are saying to us about us. How do we expect to hear God when we don’t even listen to each other.

I have been working on listening to my children. It is easy to overlook them and just tell them what to do, instead of taking the time and hearing what they have to say and how they feel. When I take the time to listen they feel valued by me and we began to understand each other better. The problem is that listening takes time and patience. I don’t have much of either. But then it occurred to me that to have time and patience you need love. You need to love the person to give them your time and patience to listen to them.

Micaiah takes listening and speaking seriously. We don’t take our words seriously. We throw away our words, with extreme callous. We should treasure the words we use. I love the idea of speaking only the words the Lord speaks to me. Not that I am a prophet like Micaiah, but it means that I need to listen mor instead of speaking. I need to listen more to God—which means I need to love God more to give Him my time and patience.