Silence is Deadly

James 1:19-20New Living Translation (NLT)

Listening and Doing

19 Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.20 Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. 

I have been listening to people.  I have been trying to understand.  I've learned that in order to understand I have to listen first.  And most times, I have to take the time to push passed the weather, and push passed the funny joke, and push passed the one word answer, usually the word "good" and wait for the awkward silence to come and go, and then listen and listen good.

 Often times, I fill the awkward silence....and I lose the opportunity to hear what was just beyond the awkward silence.

I've learned, that if I take the time and care to listen, the heart will speak.

Luke 6:45English Standard Version (ESV)

45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

I have learned that if I have the courage to listen, people will have the courage to speak. 

 I may not like what I hear, or agree with it, but in order to speak into their life, I have to hear their heart.   

And the heart is what we need to hear.  If the heart is hurting, or hard or bitter or filled with love and forgiveness that's what is valuable in knowing.  The other stuff is just the shell,

 the heart is where the TRUTH speaks.

 We have to be good listeners if we want the privilege of speaking into someone's life, or speak life into their heart.  

 Many times I think we are so afraid of what we might hear that we won't listen, sometimes we have to listen through the babble and the yelling and the

 HURT, to hear the HEART,

 of what is being said.

 In listening, we must listen to the heart, not listen in order to speak, but listen in order to hear.  If we are listening to pick apart or gather phases or words to gather evidence  to what we want to speak,

we have not heard. 

Once we have heard, we must respond.  If we listen then we must speak. 

 We must have the courage to listen and the courage to respond. 

 If we just listen and sit by silently it is worse than if we never even listened. 

 If we are witnesses to an injustice and do nothing, we are participating, by NOT responding.  

Ephesians 4:14-16New Living Translation (NLT)

14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

If we all took the time to listen, even when we disagree, or when we think we ALREADY KNOW, I believe there would be unity in relationships, in every area of our lives.

I think we need to quit listening to the media and start listening to people.  I think we need to quit looking at facebook and start looking into people's faces.  

If we pay attention, we will notice it's not the people marching or even rioting that are killing, it's the silent snipers in the dark corners that are taking people out.  The rioters are trying to figure out how to be heard, how to make people listen, and they resort to shouting and yelling and marching,

they are reacting to their hurt and to our silence

.  I'm not suggesting riots or marching or ranting and yelling, 

I'm suggesting listening and hearing,

 and responding by speaking

TRUTH IN LOVE.