Are You Just Pretending?

You acknowledge that the other person, perhaps your spouse, is making an effort at conversation by nodding your head and saying, "A-huh". Really, you're waiting for the appropriate pause so you can say what you want to say. Perhaps it's a pithy remark and your mind is busy crafting the perfect statement. Or you're thinking about the next appointment or work assignment or video game that you want to move to and you're waiting to say, "That's interesting but I gotta run. Let's talk about this later."

You've just been pretending to listen.

Scene from movie Charge of the Light Brigade whose disastrous end was thought to have been created due to inattention to understanding the orders and the intelligence sharing

"Don't just listen to God's Word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are just fooling yourselves."  (James 1.22 NLT)

You know there are several layers to listening:

• Level 0: ignoring
• Level 1: pretending (example above)
• Level 2: selective listening (what we might do when someone is delivering good and bad news)
• Level 3: attentive listening (you catch everything the other person says)
• Level 4: empathetic listening (you understand the feelings and motivations behind the words)

I've challenged myself to do more Level 3 certainly in the past few years as I read God's Word. I've a friend who leads our men's ministry and usually comes up with a question like, "What do you guys think it means in verse ___ when it says ________?" Sometimes I'm thinking, "It says what? Did I read the same chapter he did?" Or when I read I sometimes like to stop at questions, particularly Christ's questions and answer them before I read on. For example, Y'shua asks, "Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?" (Luke 12.51 NLT) We would all shout, especially around Christmas time, "Of course, we think you came to bring peace on earth! Isn't that what the angels sang at Your birth." (Not quite; see Luke 2.14) Y'shua answers His own question, "No, I came to bring division..."

Have you been reading attentively enough? Listening attentively enough to the still, small voice during prayer time to hear every word God reveals to you so that you understand what He wants you to do?

And then have you been empathetically listening so that you know how God feels and what His motivation might be when He says 'those things'? Do you know what brings Him joy, what breaks His heart and can you understand and tell Him you would/do feel the same way?

I recently had an experience where a friend who doesn't have much gave his last dollars to an offering to dig a well for kids in other countries. It brought tears to my eyes--really I was a blubbering mess--as I imagined these kids hugging him in heaven, excited to tell him that they no longer got sick and could go to school. I was weeping a lot. I imagined maybe Y'shua felt the same as He watched the widow put her last two coins in the Temple offering box. Was He a blubbering mess when He told His disciples to watch her give all she had out of love for her God?

A few years a youth ministry group answered WWJD? with DYKJWETKWHWD? (Do you know Jesus well enough to know what He would do?)

Are you listening...or only fooling yourself that you hear God speak?