Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now then, we're going to talk about ears today. Body language. What do we do with our ears? Well, we've got a big old hurting world out there. Big old hurting world. And it's waiting for someone to listen to it. A world with a hurting heart. No question about that. It's really not waiting aware that it wants to listen to anything because it's too busy chattering about its own hurts.

Those of us that have been blessed with a solid family—and I've got a feeling there are fewer and fewer of us around—but those of us that have been blessed with a solid family, whether it be a Christian family or a non-Christian family, have a huge advantage because we're not working through an awful lot of damage in our own lives. Realize that you need to be a pretty healthy person—whether God is going to heal you and make you healthy from a damaged background or just a healthy person—in order to go out and listen to a hurting world. We're going to be talking about how to do that today.

The poet Seneca, who was a sort of crusty old Roman, but he was a bright old man, was told by Nero to take his own life. Nero liked to do that, and if he told anyone to commit suicide, they had to do it. The week before he committed this suicide—which, of course, he did, he obeyed Nero, his emperor—he wrote some of his best poetry. It was a terrible amount of agony in this poetry. Sometimes it does us good to get back into the lives of some of those famous people and read it.

On the day he died, he wrote this: "Listen to me for a day, for an hour, just a moment, lest I expire in my terrible wilderness, my lonely silence. Oh God, is there no one out there to listen?" I thought that was so sad because he was a wonderful man—a wonderful man without knowing the God that we know or having the advantage to know Him. But God judges according to the light that we've received, and we don't know what God did for that old Roman as he took his own life at the command of Nero.

It just struck me how sad to think of this lonely old man in his terrible loneliness about to kill himself saying, "God, is there no one to listen?" And perhaps he sums up this hurting heart of our world waiting for someone to listen. There is an isolation when people are in trouble. They feel nobody cares, and they feel nobody cares because no one takes out the time to listen. When you're troubled, then one looks for someone to share that trouble with. When someone listens, that person feels he's no longer alone.

When you say, "What can I do? This person, this friend of mine, this child, this neighbor is in trouble." Listen. No more than that. That's what God gave us ears for. Now, we have to listen with love. I remember going on a tour with Stuart some years ago now to the mission field. SIM Missionary Society asked us to go right across their fields. They gathered the missionaries in, the pastors from the local churches, and anybody else that happened to be around, and we had this time with them.

One day, we were supposed to go to Ghana, but somebody was busy having a coup, and so we couldn't go. So there were Stuart and I on this tour, and we couldn't go into this country, and they didn't know what to do with us. We'd finished our meetings in Liberia, we couldn't go to Ghana, and so somebody came up with the bright idea that we could go to Bauchi, which was in the next state, and go to a missionary school for a week.

Now, the missionary school was not expecting us. They used to have one set week of meetings with a visiting speaker a week when they canceled classes, and all the kids in that boarding school from all the different missions would just take time off. It wasn't that week, but what they did was cancel classes anyway, or most of them. They brought Stuart and me over Ghana. We missed that whole thing, and we came unexpectedly to this missionary school.

It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life. Those missionary kids walked into our hearts and stayed there forever, I think. There was one little girl there—well, she wasn't really little, but I think of people younger than myself that shows my great age as little girls now, anybody 40 and downwards is a little girl—but she was 18 years of age, just coming up to 18. She was a delightful Christian kid.

There was no rebellion in her heart. There was no anger. She was quite happy to be where she was. Her parents were buried in the jungle back in Liberia, two countries away. She was in this missionary school. But the problem was she needed to make some very big decisions about coming back to the States and going to Wheaton College or staying in Africa and trying to get her schooling there.

Her parents—I think it took, she told me, three weeks to get a letter to them, three weeks to get a letter back—and she was sitting there with this mass of information from the States. She had to make decisions there and then because she had to apply, and it had to be accepted. She couldn't wait. She couldn't get in touch with her parents. She didn't know what to do. She was very sensitive, a quiet child.

I remember just spending a whole afternoon sitting under this great big tree out there in Africa, beautiful countryside, just listening to her. I was very tempted to jump in and start giving great advice, but I tried not to. I tried just to listen. At night, we would have our meetings, and I'd talk away up there. Then I would take time out to seek her out in the afternoon, play tennis with her, or go walk with her, or go down to the market and let her show me Africa or just listen.

I just tried to train myself to keep my mouth shut. She sent me a little note as I left, and this is what she said: "Because you listened to me, I learned a lesson. You didn't know me, what I'm really like, but you listened to me. That way you showed me you sympathized. You loved me as if you'd known me all of my 18 years. Because you listened to me, I listened to you. Everything you said, I thought about. Made sense—something fresh, something valuable, something new to be learned. Thank you."

Super little girl, and I'm sure she's headed right back for the mission field. As I say, there was no rebellion. It was just a hurting heart. She was a missionary kid that didn't have a mom at that point. God provided in a wonderful way. I mean, He had to go to all this trouble of having a coup in Ghana to get Stuart and me in the right place at the right time for an 18-year-old girl.

You see, somewhere in the jungle, her mom and dad were praying for their little girl. You see how God answers prayers? He takes Stuart and me out of our church here and takes us all the way over there to Africa and makes sure that their little girl has counsel that she needs and somebody to listen to her when her mom and dad didn't have their ears physically in the right place because they were listening to God and doing what He wanted them to do. Over here, He provided someone to listen to that little girl.

Wouldn't you like to be the answer to somebody's prayer? Perhaps today, as you go back home and you are the listening ear for a neighbor, you will never know there's an old mom somewhere praying, "God, if only there was someone to listen to my daughter. She's in such trouble. Her marriage is beginning to crumble." And you do not know as you begin to listen how you can become an answer to prayer.

Because you listen, then people become ready to listen to you. But first, we must listen. First listen, second talk. First listen, second talk. I have to say that to me all the time. Now, if you love, you listen. If you love, you listen. You listen to the teenager who feels her sister hates her. You listen to the friend who's having marriage problems. You listen to your husband when he comes home at night and not be ready to tell him two days' news as he walks in the door because he's been out there in that world where nobody listens. He's frustrated when he comes home.

God calls men to listen. He planted the ear, Psalm 94:9 says. He that has ears to hear, said Jesus, let him hear. Why do you think I put these things on your head? I remember when we were teaching our teenagers to open the Bible and try and find out what it meant. Some of these kids couldn't even read, and we had to teach them to read before they could even read the Bible, so it was a long haul.

One of these boys called Trevor—he was one of our special kids off the streets in Liverpool—said to me one day, "I've come across this verse." Of course, then we didn't have the Living Bible or anything that would even help those youngsters make sense of the Old English, and it said, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." He said, "What does 'hath' mean?" I said, "has." I mean, you had to just take that Old English and try and make it make sense for him.

He said, "Well, I've been wondering what Jesus meant, 'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.'" Now, in England, ears are called "lugs." That's just a rude way of saying, "These are your lugs." I said, "What do you think it means, Trevor?" He says, "I think it means pin your lugs back." I've put that in my Bible, "pin your lugs back." Listen up. "He that has ears to hear, let him hear." That's what Jesus said. "What do you think I gave them you for? That's what I gave them you for."

Hebrews chapter 1 verse 1 says this: "God, who in sundry times and in various places spoke in times past to the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us in Son," or in Christ, or in His Son. So God spoke in various ways through people's tongues. We've talked about the tongue, using it to bless instead of to curse, using it to take God's messages. God gave man ears to hear. He planted the ear. "He that has ears to hear, let him hear."

God didn't lean out of heaven at Jesus' baptism and say, "This is my beloved Son, talk his ear off," did He? That's what we do. We go to prayer, and what do we do? Talk His ear off. What He said is, "This is my beloved Son, hear him." Maybe our prayer life would spring to life if we wouldn't talk so much. And if we would get alone with God and be still and know first that He is God.

Listen to Him. Then you'll have a lot to talk to Him about. It won't be like rushing into the doctor's office—you know there's something wrong with you, and you sit down and you say, "Oh doctor, there's this wrong with me," and you just go on and on and on, then you say "Goodbye, doctor," and off you rush. The doctor's waiting to tell you what's wrong. What you've got to do is go in and maybe you want to tell the doctor your symptoms, then listen. Listen. Listen first, talk second. Faith comes by hearing. How does hearing work? Hearing by the word of God. If you want to get more faith, it comes by hearing.

Now, the good example of this was Samuel. Samuel in the Bible, as you know, was a little boy. He was busy in the temple. His mom had said, "You go to the temple now, God gave you to me." She gave him a name. "Samuel" means "God heard." When we speak to God, God hears. He has ears to listen to us. He always hears. His ear is not heavy that it doesn't hear.

Samuel was an answer to prayer. God heard Hannah's anguish of heart, gave her a son, and so she would never forget that God listens and God hears, she gave him a name, Samuel: "God hears." Then she gave Samuel to become a priest. What's a priest? Somebody that hears, that uses ears. She gave him into the hands of Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas. Eli was the old priest that was somewhat out of touch with God.

He had two good-for-nothing sons who were absolutely awful. They were committing immorality with the women that came to worship at the temple, in the temple. God judged them, but the old man knew what was going on. He told them to stop it, but they didn't listen to their father. They didn't listen to God. They just did their own thing. What happened, of course, was little Samuel grew up watching all this happen.

Was he contaminated? No. Did he say, "I've had a terrible background. I've watched priests of God having sex with the women that come to the temple. Therefore, that excuses me in my behavior"? No. He kept true to God even as a little teenager. It was wonderful—he went to lie down one day, and suddenly he heard a voice saying, "Samuel, Samuel." He got up and he went to Eli and he said, "Yes sir, you call me?" Eli said, "I didn't call you."

You know the story. So he went and laid down again, and the same thing happened, and the same thing happened. In the end, Eli, who was a little slow, got the message. If somebody was calling Samuel and he and Samuel were the only ones that were there, it must be God because he wasn't doing it. So he said, "Go and lie down again, and when you hear that voice, say 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.'" I hope that's underlined in your Bible, 1 Samuel chapter 3.

"Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening," NIV says. "Speak, Lord." That's what we should say every day. We should get up and say, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening." What does that presuppose? That if your servant is listening, Lord, your servant is ready to do whatever you tell me to do. And that should be our heart attitude as we go out into our day. "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth."

His very name means "I'm listening." Wouldn't it be nice to have God give us a name and say, "That's not going to be your name anymore, Jill. I want to call you Samuel S." You're a Samuel S. God, you listen, you listen to me. I hope God looks at me and knows that I listen to Him. I don't listen enough.

Samuel did not let any of God's words fall to the ground. His ears were catching them. Every time a little word came down from heaven, his ears were there under it, and they absorbed it and caught it. So he became a prophet-priest. He listened to God's message and then he told it to the people, and they listened to Samuel. Why? Because they knew he was a man that listened to God, and they listened to him. Why did they listen to him? Because he listened to them.

You read the book of Samuel and just underline all the time Samuel listened to the people. I just did that this morning very, very quickly when I got up really early, and it amazed me. I've got colored marks all over the story of Samuel and the people because over and over again, he listened to the people. Then he told God what the people said. Then he listened to God. God told him what to say to the people. He came back and told the people, and the people listened to him.

You listen to them, they'll listen to you. Some of you have been trying to get through to people for years, but you've never tried listening. You've only tried talking. You've talked their ear off. You've cut their ear off. Try listening.

Now then, the Bible says in Revelation 1:4 and 5 and 6 that you and I are a kingdom of priests. That in the New Testament, which is where we live after the cross, in the new covenant, we become lay priests. What does that mean? We listen to the people. Then we take what they say and listen to what God says about it. Take it to God, tell God. God tells us what to say, so we go back to the people.

We do exactly what the Old Testament priests do for people. That's what it means to be a kingdom of priests. To be born again, to be born into the kingdom of God, means that you become a priest, and your ears are very special. In Exodus 29:19 and 20, we read about the priest's ears. What happened was all the priests came together in the temple, and there was a sacrificial ram sacrificed. The blood was collected in a bowl, and the blood was placed on the earlobes of the priests.

I love the picture. If you and I know Jesus and His blood or His life has been applied to our lives, as it were, God has leaned out of heaven and marked our ears with the blood of Christ. They are pardoned ears. They are marked to listen. Because Jesus died for us, I must listen to the hurting world that He came to save. Have you ever thought of your ears as marked with the blood of Christ? If we are a kingdom of priests—and that's what they did to the Old Testament priests with the blood of a ram—how much more with the blood of the Lamb?

Pardoned ears. But there's another place in the Old Testament, in Exodus 21:1 through 5, where not only were ears marked with blood, they were marked in that society in a different way. This is to do with the slave trade, which was a normal way of life for people in those days. God tried to write in some laws so that the slaves and women and the foreigner and the stranger and the captive would be protected from the evil heart of man who would oppress such people, naturally speaking.

So God in His laws tried to put some checks and balances in. One of the checks and balances that He put in for these sort of people was that in the year of Jubilee, the prisoners would go free, and the slaves would be emancipated. They would be let go. They would become freed men. So when the year of Jubilee came along, everybody got very excited.

Now then, God said there might be one or two of you slaves that love your master and don't want to be freed. If there are, the master can take him down to the marketplace so a lot of people are witnesses, put him against a great big post that was always apparently in the marketplace, take an awl—which was a hammer and a great big wooden nail—and pierce his ear right through. This way it would really mutilate the earlobe, but that's what would happen.

Now, what would happen then? Every time from that day on as the slave went about his master's business, people would look at his ear. As they saw his pierced ear, they would realize he had said, "I love my master. I will not go out free." Marked ears. "I love my master. I will not go out free."

Some Christians say, "I love my master," but they do not say, "I will not go out free." Some of you here have said, "I love Jesus Christ. He is my Savior." But you have not said, "Pierce my ear. Mark me for listening." If you do that, if you say, "I am willing to serve Jesus. I am willing to use my ears to listen to the hurting people around me," God will mark you in such a way—and I don't know how He will do it, but people will know. As surely as they knew the slave with the pierced ear, with the mutilated ear, they will know that you will listen to them. People will beat a path to your door if you will be willing to listen.

Now, the counselors that work among us tell me this: that they are marked women. They don't go around with pierced ears, but they have made a ministry out of listening. That's what our counselors or encouragers are, just listening ears. But they also make a habit of listening to God. So the wonderful thing is as they listen to you and they've been listening to God, they match up what they've been hearing with what they're listening to.

Makes sense, and it helps you. That's what New Testament priests do. We are a kingdom of priests. We have consecrated ears, blood-touched ears. We have pardoned ears, we have pierced ears. I would like to think that every time you put your earrings in from now on in, every time those of you with pierced ears put your earrings in, you think about this. Wouldn't that be a good reminder? "Today I go out to listen to a hurting world." Every time you put them in—be a good little practical reminder—pardoned ears, pierced ears.

Listening, however, must be learned. You don't become a priest overnight. You didn't in the Old Testament, and you don't in the New Testament. Listening must be learned. There is an art to listening. You don't have to say something every time somebody says something to you. There is a value to silence. Stuart and I occasionally get away for an overnight. We just get out of the city and we go somewhere local, but we usually go where there is nice walking to be had.

So we stay in a little place, and we get up and we walk in the morning, we walk in the afternoon, we walk at night. Stuart runs in between, I just walk. We got to a lovely place last time we went about a month or so ago just for a little overnight, and we got up early in the morning. It was a lovely golf course we found ourselves on, and so we began to walk, and we walked the whole 18 holes of this golf course. It was buried right in the forest—the Kettle Moraine forest.

It was quiet. It was heavenly quiet. Well, all around this golf course, I kept saying to Stuart, "Isn't it quiet? Isn't it quiet? Oh, isn't it quiet? Oh, isn't it quiet? Oh, it's so quiet." And he said, "Well, if you'd just shut up, it would be quiet." We have laughed so much about that because I realized that even when it was quiet, I couldn't shut up about it. I had to say something about it.

I'm a talker, and talkers find it real hard to shut up. So even when it's quiet, we have to say something about it. So we have a lot of learning to do, people like me. I don't know, maybe I'm only talking to one or two of you. Maybe I'm talking to more of you than one or two of you. Right?

Listening has to be learned. It's a matter of obedience. It really is a matter of obedience. The value of silence—I have to practice it. It's hard work. It involves thinking. What does it involve thinking about? Shut up. That's what it involves thinking about. Listening to the other person, you're going to have to understand the full implication of what they're saying, and that means concentration. Concentration.

Your body language physically will help. Look as though you're listening, and this bit is for me. I don't care who else—I'm going to preach to myself for a minute because I never do this. My mind is so busy, and my body is so busy, and I'm always rushing from A to B and something C down the road is looking at me. What I do is not look as though I'm listening. So this bit is for me.

Do you want to listen in? That's fine, just for a minute. What we need to do is look as though we're listening. We need to look straight in their eyes, not past them. In fact, I was talking to somebody just yesterday, and there was something really interesting happening behind them. Have you ever had that experience, especially on a Sunday morning in the lobby? And I'm listening to someone, but oh, there's such an interesting situation happening just here.

So my eyes kept coming off her, and in the end, she turned around to see what I was looking at, and I realized what I was doing. So what we've got to do is say, "Come on, let's have it. You're center stage in my thinking." That has really helped me—that little phrase. "Come on, let's have it. You are center stage in my thinking." Now, if we're going to tell them that, our body language will tell them that. Literally, our body language.

I watch my husband. He's a good listener. You mightn't think he is, but he is. I watch him—he sort of has a typical way when he's listening, and he concentrates. The best person in our family at listening is David, our eldest son. He's a wonderful listener. When David listens to you, he has the most beautiful eyes, though I say it myself. Big brown, gorgeous eyes, very direct stare.

David always tells you by his body language, "You are center stage in my thinking," because you are, and you can tell it. But his body language, everything he is and has—he doesn't have to practice it. It's one of his beautiful gifts. But his body language teaches me more as I watch David listen than I learn.

I saw a pastor the other day, and he was tidying his desk while somebody was trying to tell him something. Have you ever done that? When your children try and tell you something, stop what you're doing if you can. Stop being busy. "Yes, darling, go on, tell me, Mommy's listening, Mommy's listening." Well, what is your body language saying? Mommy isn't listening, Mommy's doing this, and Mommy's doing that.

Listening has to be Christ-centered. Therefore, listeners have to be mature people. Samuel grew before the Lord. Samuel grew before the Lord. Now think about this: you have to be a whole person if you're going to listen to other people. I come back to my opening statement. It doesn't mean if you've had a bad background you can never be a listener or a counselor. You can learn to do that, and you can be a very empathetic listener and counselor because you've really been where the other person's been.

Sometimes it's hard to not let all those remembrances come out and get in the way of listening to somebody else with a similar experience. That's all. But you can learn to work through all of that. But you've got to be mature if you're going to learn to listen. You've got to be Christ-centered because a self-centered individual isn't a good listener. Because all they're thinking about is themselves.

Have you ever watched two people talking? One of them says, "Oh, I got up this morning, and I got an awful lot of rheumatism." And the other person immediately says, "Yes, I've got a bad back too." And then the other person says, "And you know, I've got a daughter that's really in trouble." And then the other person says, "Oh, you should hear about my son. He's a lot worse off than your daughter."

You're matching stories. You're not listening. A lot of us tend to do that because we're self-centered. What we are listening to simply triggers something that has to do with ourself. So you're going to have to be pretty mature as a Christian if you can get outside yourself to listen.

There's a lot of jokes about this because women are bad at listening. "I haven't spoken to my wife for two years," said a man. "Why?" "I didn't want to interrupt her." You know, we know all the jokes. There's something I do that irritates my husband to death, and I still have to work on it: I complete all his sentences for him. Have you ever done that? I mean, it's such fun. I mean, he starts off, and I think I know exactly what he should say at the end of this sentence, so I just finish it for him. Very, very irritating.

Now, I have a husband who will tell me that. Some people have a husband that won't tell you that, so it becomes a habit. Well, it's even a habit with him telling me that. But we do this. Somebody starts a sentence, and we complete it for him. Sometimes it's how he wants it completed, and other times it isn't what he wanted to say at all.

When did we last really listen to our kids or our husbands? We're a better arbitrator if you can listen to both parties. To learn to listen to both parties. If you're self-centered, you won't care, you'll be impatient, you'll only be interested in your point of view. I read a lovely little poem quite a long time ago:

"I lend a sympathetic ear to other people's woes, however dull it is to hear their real or fancied throes. I pay to every gloomy line attention undiminished because I plan to start on mine the moment that they're finished."

That's listening with interior motives. That's listening because you're self-centered. "Okay, well, I'll listen to her and then maybe she'll listen to me." If you go through the Gospels and find out how many people Jesus listened to—that's another little Bible study for you off this Bible study—it's incredible how much time He spent listening to people. Great lesson for us.

So if you really aspire to listen, you have to abandon your preoccupation with yourself. Put it at the foot of the cross. A girl met me not long ago down in Florida. I was taking some meetings there, and she said, "Do you remember me?" And I said, "Well, I think you were at Capernwray Bible School about 25 years ago." And she said, "That's right." She said, "You gave me a piece of advice once. I came down to help you in the house with the three children."

We worked a lot, and then we sat down, we had a cup of coffee, and you listened to me. And she said, "You listened to me for about an hour." And then we got on and finished the work. This happened every week because she was assigned to help me in the house for her practical duty one day a week. She said, "Do you remember what you said to me in the end?" And I said, "No, I really can't." She said, "You just looked at me and you said, 'Why don't you quit being so preoccupied with your own spiritual growth, and then you'll grow?'"

She'd been so intent on growing spiritually, she had become totally preoccupied with her own spiritual growth. What she needed to hear, actually, after hours of listening and making sure I was right, I dared to say to her, "Why don't you quit being so preoccupied with your own self?" It was dressed in evangelical Christianity: with your own spiritual growth.

Sometimes we get so preoccupied with self, and it takes different forms. Have you ever listened to someone for hours and hours and hours, and all they want to do is how they've grown, or how they led somebody to Christ, or how they didn't, or how they're getting on, or how they're doing with their prayer life? What are they? They're preoccupied again with self, and they'll never be good listeners.

So what we have to do is abandon that, put it at the foot of the cross. Now, I think many of you know my favorite verse is Isaiah 50:4. It's a wonderful verse. Let me remind you about it again. Isaiah 50:4 says this: "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, he wakens my ear to listen like the one being taught."

In your Bibles, it might say "like the learned." I used to be very discouraged when I read that. I thought, "That's the problem. I can't listen to God. I can't read my Bible like the learned because I'm a layperson. I'm not a professional Christian." Do you feel like that sometimes? Do you look around and everybody knows so much? They seem to be so trained spiritually, and you say, "Well, I'm not like that."

You get discouraged, and you're not learned. Well, actually, the word isn't learned. It's "like one being taught." Now let me read it again. "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary." Now, how am I going to know this word that I have to give to people after I've listened to them? "He wakes me morning by morning, he wakes my ear to listen like one being taught."

Actually, an instructed tongue is really the tongue of a disciple. Now let me read it again. "The Sovereign Lord has given me the tongue of His disciple, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakes me morning by morning, he wakes my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious and drawn back."

Now this, of course, is prophetic, talking of Jesus, the servant of Jehovah, but we can take it for ourselves because we are the servant of Jehovah too. I've put in my Bible, "God speaking: Jill, get up and listen to me so you can go out and listen to them." That sums it up. "Get up and listen to me so you can go out and listen to them." Very simple, really. We make it too complicated.

So what did Jesus tell you today? Did you get up and listen to Him so you can go out and listen to them? What is it? What are you carrying with you today? What has He already told you that will be necessary before the day is through as you listen to someone that will match up with their need? He has given you—if you have waited on Him this morning in your time of quiet—the know-how or the word to sustain the weary one.

How sad if you didn't get up and listen to Him because you do not know what He wants you to match up with somebody's need as you go out and listen to them. You'll be groping, and you'll be trying to think. So it's up to us, those of us who are priests—and we are a kingdom of priests in the New Testament sense—to get up and listen to Him so we can go out and listen to them.

1 Samuel chapter 8 shows you this in a very real way. Let me just show you a couple of things here that sum up what I've been saying in this way of listening to God and listening to others. Verse 6: the people were asking for a king. "Give us a king to lead us." This displeased Samuel—this is chapter 8 verse 6—this displeased Samuel, so he prayed to the Lord. He went to the Lord.

The people said something to Samuel. Samuel went to the Lord. The Lord told him something because Samuel was listening. "Listen to all the people are saying to you. It's not you they've rejected; they've rejected me." So Samuel goes back, listens to what the people are saying, tells them—verse 10—Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.

He said, "Well, God says if you have a king, he'll do this, and he'll do that, and he'll take your maidens, and they'll be slaves. Do you still want a king?" And they say yes—verse 19—the people refused to listen to Samuel and therefore listen to God. "No," they said, "we want a king over us." Verse 21: when Samuel heard all the people said, he repeated it before the Lord.

You see the thing happening? Listening to God, listening to the people, matching it up. "What did you say, God? What did you say?" It's a beautiful little sermon in itself. The Lord said, "Listen to them. Give them a king." Do you ever wonder what to say? Oh, if only I had the know-how. "The Lord has given me the tongue of a disciple, that I might know how to give the word in season to him who is weary." How? He wakens my ear to hear morning by morning. He wakens my ear to hear like one being taught.

Marvelous verses, and I would like to think that you memorize Isaiah 50 verse 4 through 6 this week. So discernment comes from God. The finest listener in the world cannot meet the need of a soul. God has to do that. Now, remember that. The finest listener in the world cannot meet the need of that soul. God has to do that. But God can do that. And He'll give you the answer that you need.

I remember when I went through Billy Graham training on how to lead a soul to Christ. My instructor told me years and years and years ago, "As you listen to people, pray all the time." And I've kept that habit up. When people are talking to me and I'm trying to listen—and I'm trying to do all that I'm telling you to do and concentrate on it, try and hear all the implications of what they're saying, try and say 'You're center stage in my thinking', try and make that happen, try and forget myself and not let it trigger my own needs as I'm listening to theirs—all of this that I've talked about so far, as I do this, I'm praying all the time.

"Lord, give me a clue. Give me a clue. Is it the thing you told me this morning or yesterday or something buried in the treasure of my mind? What is the answer to this poor girl's need? How can I find something that's going to comfort this person? This is an impossible situation, Lord, help me, give me discernment." Now, as we pray with praying, listening ears, the discernment will come from God.

So let me give you a few practical hints. Don't say anything according to your immediate reaction. Don't say anything according to your immediate reaction. Wait. In fact, I told two people yesterday after I listened for half an hour on the phone to each one of them: "I want to call you back tomorrow. I want to think about this." Don't ever be afraid of saying that. Now, I could have come off with something. I thought of something, I thought of something that might help. But I wasn't sure, and I wanted to pray about it, and I wanted to think about it.

So don't say anything according to your immediate reaction. Ask a lot of questions. If you want to be a good listener, keep them going talking. Just keep asking questions, asking questions, and they'll start and tell you more and more. Because the more information you get, the better handle God's going to give you on how to help them in the end.

And there's a difference between our own advice and God's wisdom. So depend on the Spirit. That doesn't mean it always has to be a spiritual answer. It might be a very practical answer, might be a psychological answer, might be an emotional answer. I don't know. We are whole people. We are bound up in the bundle of life with all these things. But try and listen without lecturing. That's the important thing.

When Jesus faced the woman taken in adultery, He did not lecture her. He listened to the whole thing without lecturing. Don't always be quick with an opinion about everything—a verse of Scripture for everybody, advice freely given. There's nothing more irritating for somebody to start and talk to you and you've got a verse of Scripture—nothing more irritating sometimes—and just the "ministry of presence."

I've written that in my Bible too. Have a "ministry of presence"—just be there. People often say to Stuart and me, "I'm going down to the hospital. Somebody's just been told they have terminal cancer. What do I say?" Over and over again, I hear my husband say, "Nothing. Just go." The ministry of presence. Somebody heard a dear friend of hers had a dear relative die. What should they do? My advice was, "Get on a plane. Spend the money. Just go and be there. Just go. Just arrive at the door."

"Well, I haven't been invited to the funeral." Doesn't matter. Just go. It is incredible if you just drop everything when people are in crisis and go and don't say anything. Just go, and if they're ready to talk to you, then you can go and listen. In the end, the goal obviously is to help them to listen to God for themselves. But often people have to start and talk to you before they ever talk to God.

Now, just very quickly in the last minute, the hazards of listening. If people reject your advice, if they don't listen to you in the end after you've done an awful lot of listening to them and you feel it's time to give them the word in season—there is a hazard. They might not receive it. They might reject you, and probably some of them will. If people reject your advice, don't personalize it.

Remember that verse I've just read to you in 1 Samuel 8: they haven't rejected you; they've rejected me. Often if we are bringing God's word to bear on a situation and people are not willing to hear it and say, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, I'll do what God says through you," they will reject it. Don't personalize that and say, "Oh, they're rejecting me." If they're rejecting God's advice, then they're rejecting Him.

Now, that's very hard, but you have to be a mature person to realize it's not personal. Because we tend to personalize everything. We tend to think because they've rejected my advice or my effort to minister by listening, they've rejected me. Now, they might have done, but they might not have done. It's not always the case. And remember, there's a reward up there in heaven one day.

I heard about some missionaries that spent their entire life listening and loving and their whole body language, body, soul, mind, hands, feet doing for Jesus. "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," they said. They went out and they listened to a hurting world and they did what they could in a practical sense for 35 years in the mission field.

When they came home, they were led to expect that the missions committee would be there on the dock. They were on a boat. It was in the olden days. Actually, one of the missionary partners of this couple told me this very story. When they arrived back, they looked out, and they had been privileged to have the president of the United States apparently traveling with them on one part of the trip. So the red carpet was out, and the bands were playing, and they joined in, being thrilled to bits to see the president welcomed home.

Well, when all that kerfuffle was over, they looked around over the boat for the missions committee, for their family, for their friends. After all these years of service, they had so much to share. They couldn't wait to get home and have people listen to what God had done through their lives all those years on the mission field. They'd only been home twice in the whole of 35 years. It was in the beginning days of missions when they couldn't come and go as nicely as we can now.

Well, after a bit, they realized that there was no one there. There was no missions committee. There was no family. There was no one. No one to listen. No one to greet them. And as they put their arms around each other and prayed about this shattering thing, the man told me it was just as if God leaned out of heaven and said, "Oh, you're not home yet. You're not home yet. One day, when you really come home, the red carpet will be out, and the bands will be playing, and you'll find a listening ear, an appreciative Savior, a loving heart. You're not home yet."

So if they never listen to you down here, don't worry about it. There's a loving Savior's ear in heaven waiting in eternity to listen to you then. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for ears. You planted the ear, You said. Now, Lord, help us to use the ears You planted in our heads to pin our lugs back too, to listen to You that we might go out and listen to them. Waken our ear to hear morning by morning. Teach us the techniques of listening, but greater than that, grow us up so that we may cease to be so self-centered. That we might begin to listen with love to other people. And having listened long enough, earn the right to speak. May we, like Samuel, go from this meeting to say, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." For Jesus Christ's sake, amen.