LifeLink Devotions for Monday, May 6, 2024

We are beginning an adventure this week that will help us become people of wisdom. How did you do with the assignment you had over the weekend? I hope you were disciplined and diligent to get it done. If not, go there now and start. It’s really important. We must reach the point in our spiritual lives that wisdom transcends the pursuit of all else. 

Today’s principle of wisdom is this: Pay attention

Proverbs 22:17  “And listen to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what I teach.”

We must let wisdom be transmitted to us. Sixteen times in the book of Proverbs we are told by Solomon to “listen”. I think you will agree with me that not listening is a problem in our lives. It is such a problem that it is destroying relationships and dividing churches. Consider these ways in which we don’t listen:

1.      We simply don’t hear what another person has said so we have to ask them to repeat it.

2.      We don’t hear what another person is saying and we don’t care to hear it so we don’t ask them to repeat it.

3.      We hear with our ears what another person is saying, and we may even give assent to it, but only to be polite. It does not really mean anything to us.

4.      We hear with our ears what another person is saying, but because we did not invite their input we ignore it.

5.      We ask for input from another person, hear what they have to say, but weigh its value by what we have predetermined to be our preferred outcome.

6.      We ask for input from another person, hear what they have to say, and agree to its value, but that agreement is simply to avoid hurting their feelings, and we do not intend to apply what they said to our lives.

7.      We ask for input from another person, but filter what they are saying through our misperceptions of the person or circumstances, leading us to misinterpret what was said and then blame that person for the outcome.

8.      We ask for input from another person, but don’t listen to the whole context of what they are saying, leading us to apply it out of context, and then blame that person for the outcome.

9.      We ask for input from another person, listen to it carefully, but break the confidence in which it was shared by telling it to someone else, and then blame the giver of the advice for the consequences.

10.  We ask for input from another person, listen carefully to what they are saying, then seek to apply any and all elements of Godly wisdom to our lives so that it changes us.

As you can see, and have maybe experienced, listening strategies # 2 – 9 cause serious, sometimes irreparable damage to relationships and churches. I know because it has happen to me.

I have had far too many situations in which people were not listening and then responded in an ungodly way. It weighs very heavily on me and has discouraged me. My heart has been wounded. But what hurts even more is knowing that I have not always listened either, and I have responded inappropriately. It seems that our desire to be heard takes priority over our desire to listen, and that is unwise.

Friends, let wisdom be transmitted to you. Learn to listen with your heart, and let it modify your will. Otherwise, Satan will diminish the glory of God in your life.

Pastor John