The Christians Hour

Bob Russell: Welcome to The Christians Hour. Thank you for joining us today. It is a joy to welcome you to our program. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we use radio and media to share the good news of Jesus Christ. We take that truth, the hope and salvation found in him, to those who have never heard to the ends of the earth.

Have you ever been in a conversation that felt completely one-sided? You know the kind where words are being exchanged, but it doesn't really seem like the other person is listening. I know I have. There have been times when I have shared something close to my heart, and I was only met with a quiet nod and an "oh, okay." Those times can be discouraging, especially when it is something important that you are sharing or even with someone that you respect.

In today's message, Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, shines a light on what it means to truly love people by listening, giving someone our full and undivided attention, and that there is power and impact that it can have. We will look at an encounter Jesus had with a blind beggar, a man who was often ignored by those passing by. But everything changed when Jesus stopped and listened. Here is Ben to share more.

Ben Cachiaras: Today what we want to do is talk about a simple but very powerful way that every one of us can connect with people better, honor people better, and build a bridge of respect and friendship with people so that we can bless them. It can be summed up in the shocking but simple truth that I was just hoping would lodge itself in your gut today: listening is loving. We are going to see that clearly demonstrated in Jesus' life, so much so that if you actually want to be a follower of Jesus, we have to figure this out. This is a really difficult thing for me because I like to talk.

But if you want someone to feel lifted and loved, listen to them. And if you want them to feel insulted and invalidated, ignore them. Think about it; the opposite of love is not hate. Sometimes we think the opposite of love is hate, but it is not. The opposite of love is indifference. It is not "I hate you"; it is "I didn't even notice you or care about you." But when you show up with curiosity and interest and you ask questions that show you care, not just to be understood but to understand, and you are ready to listen to get there, now you are saying something very different.

I see you. You are important to me. You matter. I am interested enough to listen. Friends, that is what love looks like, and every one of us can do that. That is what we are called to do. That is good news, because some of us feel like we don't know how to love people or that we are bad at it. We are not good with words, we don't know how to show it, or we can't express ourselves. That is normal. We all feel that way sometimes, but you can learn to listen. If you do that, you will show love in a very powerful way.

That is pretty cool because we live in a world where if someone actually listens, it is shocking. The Barna Group did a big study among a bunch of people that aren't Christians and asked what the qualities they would value the most in a person that they would feel comfortable talking about spiritual matters with. Do you know what the number one response was? The number one top quality they would feel comfortable talking about spiritual things with someone was if they listened without judgment. They want someone who leans in and says, "Tell me about that."

Listening doesn't have to mean agreeing with or condoning; it just means listening. Listening is loving. The sad news is that two-thirds of the people in that study said they don't have anyone in their life who would listen to them like that. I wonder if you have any friends that would feel that way, like there is probably no one who would listen to me. This is why Jesus was the ultimate listener. Jesus taught all this stuff and he did miracles, things that we can't do, but again and again and again, Jesus showed up and loved in the very practical way that you can do and I can do.

It is called listening. I love the quote from Dallas Willard. He says, "The first act of love is always the giving of attention." Look for that principle as we go to the scriptures in Luke chapter 18. I want to give you a kind of survey of what Jesus does in Luke chapter 18. It is very interesting to me. I never noticed this until this week. The first thing is Jesus tells about a widow who comes to a judge pleading her case about injustice, and the judge ignores her because everyone ignores widows in that culture. They weren't important.

Eventually, she kept talking and he finally listened. Jesus says that is what it is like when you pray, because even if you are a nobody and everyone else ignores you, God will listen. Then he tells this story about two guys who go to the temple to pray. One is a super religious Pharisee, and he calls out to God with all of his pious language about how great he is and how thankful he is that he is not like those losers, those sinners, those tax collectors, prostitutes, and all those adulterers. He says, "God, thank you. I'm so awesome. I know you all love me."

The other guy is just a lowly sinner, a tax collector, and he can't even lift his head to look at God. He is beating his chest and says, "Just have mercy on me, a horrible sinner." Jesus says of those two, God listened to that guy. Then right after that, Jesus is out and about and a bunch of people say, "Hey, let's take our little kids up to Jesus and let him touch them and bless them. Wouldn't that be cool?" But the disciples said, "No, get those kids out of here. Jesus is busy. He's got really important things to do right now."

Jesus said, "No, bring the kids. Bring the kids." Can you see that in your mind? Jesus is sitting there asking, "What's your name? What grade are you in? Hey, I like your glasses. You've got something on your shirt." You can see him being with the kids. He saw them and he listened to them. Then right after that, we come to the passage that we just read moments ago. Jesus is coming into a town called Jericho. Verse 35 says there was a blind beggar. If you were blind, you were a beggar. He is sitting beside the road because where else would you be?

He hears the noise of the crowd and asks what is happening. Verse 37, they told him it was Jesus from Nazareth going by. So he began shouting, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" "Be quiet!" They shushed him up too, but he only shouted louder. Desperation cannot be quieted. One of the things I love that strikes me about this is that Jesus wasn't really looking to do a miracle. He wasn't like, "You know, it's about time for another miracle, don't you think?" No, he is busy. He is on his way. He has things to do and places to go.

He is heading up to Jerusalem for Passover. It is crowded. He has 15 more miles. It is all an uphill trudge and it is hot because it is Passover time. He is tired, hot, dusty, and dirty. People have been clawing at him, asking him questions all day, and now the crowds are swarming and the paparazzi is out. Jericho is super busy that time of year. Picture Times Square on New Year's Eve. In the middle of all that, the real test of your love is often when it is the hardest time for you to listen.

It is the biggest test when you are really busy, when you are really late, when you are really tired, or when you are surrounded by distractions. For Jesus, in the middle of all that, with the streets lined with these beggars and destitute people, one of them is this blind guy who calls out, "Jesus, have mercy on me." Here is what is shocking to me. The shocking part of the story for us at this point, after seeing Jesus heal so many people in the Bible, probably isn't that he healed a blind man, as amazing as that is.

The shocking part is that he heard him. Think about it. When you hear someone who isn't usually listened to, that is shocking. He hears that lone man's voice over the din of the crowd somehow, a voice that others had learned to tone out. It is like when our kids were tiny and Carla and I would be fast asleep and one of them, with their little voice, would cry out in the night. Carla would hear that voice and rise up to attend to her young while I pretended to be asleep. Jesus hears this man's voice.

They told him to shush up, but he wouldn't. Verse 40, when Jesus heard him, he stopped. He said, "Hey, bring that guy over here." As the man came near, Jesus did what? He asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" "Lord," he said, "I want to see." Jesus says, "Alright, you receive your sight; your faith has healed you." Instantly the man could see, and he and everyone else was very, very happy and praised God. What I love about this story is that Jesus didn't just feel like he had to get up there and was exhausted.

He didn't just say, "Okay, be healed, be healed, and you get a car." He doesn't do that. What does he do? He stops, he gets right in front of the guy, and he asks him a really good question. When is the last time you think that guy had anyone ask him anything except maybe "what are you doing here?" There are people that God has put in your path, I'm convinced of it. Maybe in your own house, or at work or at school, where it's been a long time since anyone asked them anything real and waited for an answer because they cared.

Jesus says, "What do you want me to do for you?" What is he doing there? I mean, he already knows the answer. It is like he is giving the man the dignity to draw down deep inside of himself and say something about what he wanted for a change, how he felt, and what the desire of his heart was. That is listening. That is caring. That is validating. That is what everyone needs. Who needs that from you? Listen and ask good questions like Jesus did. I'm convinced that the greatest act of love that man received that day was not that he got his eyes back, but that Jesus healed his heart.

Listening is loving. He was begging for money every day, but money is not what he wanted most in life. The thing he wanted most in life was not even his eyesight. It was to be whole and to be seen and to be known and to be loved like everyone else. Jesus heard him because he asked a question and then he listened. Do you see the irony here? Everyone is passing by. They look at this guy, but then he can't see them. The reality is that nobody sees him. Everyone else is blind, but Jesus sees him.

Jesus heals his heart and then his eyes. Here is the principle: the best way to help someone feel seen is to truly hear them. If you want to be able to say, "I see you, you matter, I'm listening," then you help someone feel seen by making sure they feel heard. God's called you and me to this kind of ministry, to truly listen to people. Listening ironically begins by opening our eyes to see people, and then we open our ears to hear their story. We can't open eyes to heal blindness like Jesus can, but we can listen like Jesus did.

That opens hearts and opens doors for his love to get in to build bridges of friendship and to bless people. Listening is loving. Who is God calling you to listen to? Is it one of your neighbors or a friend? We have to get good at this in our houses and in our homes because we are not going to go bless the world out there and be horrible listeners at home. It is all one piece. We are like Jesus everywhere we go or not at all. We need to get better at this with our kids, with our friends, and with people who have different outlooks on things.

It is important that we get better at this with people with different skin colors, people who are from different countries, or people who have different political ideas. If we ever did, it would be shocking, wouldn't it? It just is. I thought what we'd do then is to maybe spend a couple of minutes with what I will just call non-obvious ways that we can get better at listening. Let's get real practical for the next few minutes. These are non-obvious habits of people who are good at listening. If you want to love by listening, here are some non-obvious ways.

Number one: go all in on listening. Do it not partway, but go all in. When Jesus encountered that man, he was not also texting the disciples saying, "Yeah, you can be healed." He was all in. He was there, dialed in. I think we sometimes think of attention as like a dimmer switch, like it's kind of, "Well, I'm sort of there, maybe not." It is better if we think about attention as like an on-off switch. The idea is to just put it on 100%, be there, and engage. I can be really, really bad at this.

I think to myself that I am fully capable of sending this text and hearing everything I need to know about this conversation. Have you ever done that? It happens all the time where you are doing something else because you are sure you can keep up with whatever you need to hear. But we've also all been on the receiving end of that. You know what that feels like when you're telling someone something and you start getting the vibe that they're not really interested or not listening. You start feeling a little self-conscious.

Maybe you start mumbling or your voice trails off because you're just not sure it matters. See what I'm saying? The problem is when I'm not dialed in 100%, even if I think I am catching everything, they don't feel that way. That defeats the whole purpose of Christian listening. A Christian doesn't just listen to get information. A Christian, a follower of Jesus, listens to lift and to love. That's why we dial in and be all in on listening as best we can. This is what I'm trying to grow in. Stop doing something else and pay attention to this thing.

Let's do another one: be a loud listener. In every encounter Jesus had, he listened intently, he asked questions, and he gave feedback. They felt heard. Don't be passive; in other words, give lots of feedback when you listen. David Brooks says when another person is talking to you, you ought to be listening so actively that you're practically burning calories. Have you ever watched a person who is really good at this? They're matching the emotion of the person who is speaking. If it's interesting, the eyebrows go up and the mouth goes open.

When we actively listen, it doesn't just help you and me actively engage; it gives them a better gift of love. That's why we do it, not just for our own benefit. In every conversation, the person who is speaking is having an internal battle. There is a fight going on inside of them and they're wondering if this is even worth it. Should I open up and really say this? Does it matter? Is it safe? Or should I hold back and be inhibited and just give up? The difference is active listening.

Active listening opens the door; it's warm and inviting and says, "Come on in." How about this one: get beyond what happened to how you felt about that. It's a big difference, isn't it? This is what good listeners do. Jesus never stayed surface level. He asked probing questions, and he didn't just get the facts from the blind man. He didn't just ask what the problem was and hear that he was blind. No, he got to what was inside the man's heart. There's a big difference between "I'm blind" and "Jesus, please heal me," isn't there?

We have to get beyond the surface level. If someone says they had to put their mom in a nursing facility, you can ask which one or where she went. Or you can say, "Wow, that must be hard. What was that like for you? How's your mom doing? How do you feel about this?" See the difference? The floodgates open with one and they are done with the other. Listening is loving. But if the only thing we're listening for is facts and data and yes-no answers, we'll never draw out things in a way that shows someone they matter to God.

How about this one: don't fear the pause. Isn't it funny how we're just terrified of silence sometimes and little dead spaces? We live in this quick world where we think something's bad. One time religious leaders were gathered around this woman who was caught in adultery. They were getting ready to stone her and were making these accusations and saying all this stuff. Then they looked at Jesus and asked what he was going to say. Do you know what he said? Nothing for a minute. He just stepped back and drew in the sand a little bit.

We don't even know what he was drawing, but I think maybe he was buying time or slowing things down a little bit. Don't fear the pause. You can wait for the other person to finish and then pause. Think about what's been said. If they start to talk again, just literally pause them. Say, "Just a second," take a breath, and slow it down. I'm told in Japanese culture they encourage people to reflect before replying, and they can handle an eight-second pause in most conversations. Can you imagine that in American culture? No way.

Proverbs 18:13 says spouting off with an answer before listening is just foolish and shameful. That is why James says in a world like ours, where everyone is very slow to listen and quick to speak and get angry, shock the world by being the opposite. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Don't fear the pause. How about this one: keep looping. Looping is when you repeat back to someone what they just said to you so they know that you really got it. "What I hear you saying is," and then you paraphrase it as best you can.

Then they get to validate if you got it or if that was not what they meant at all, and they get to try again. This is how most couples know this, where one person says something and the other person reacts to it but they didn't really hear what was said in the first place. They make a reaction, and then this person reacts to that, but they misunderstood what this person was trying to say. You just go back and forth. You can avoid all that by looping. The times I've hurt my wife the most have been when she has felt invalidated because I didn't listen and loop like this.

Listen, repeat back, and paraphrase. You honor someone instead of assuming you know everything about how they already think and feel. This is what we're so good at in our world, just putting everyone in a little box and a category. We think we already know who you are and what you think and what you're like. Listening 101 is making sure you're hearing right. How about this last one? Ask good questions. That little guy is Gabe. He's my nephew's son. He's about five, and he bombards the world with a barrage of questions constantly.

"What is that? How does that work? Where are you going? What are you doing? Can I touch it? Can I do that? When you catch a fish, does it hurt? Do worms have moms? Does God wear shoes? Why doesn't the moon fall out of the sky?" It's all this stuff. The average kid between the ages of two and five asks 40,000 questions. Gabe had his used up at age three. But somewhere along the line, we stop asking so many questions because we're told it's invasive and it might not be personal.

We get scared we might ask a dumb question or that we shouldn't get personal because it's uncomfortable. We're protecting ourselves because when you ask a question, you're being vulnerable. You're humbling yourself enough to say, "I don't know. Would you please help me know?" When you are humble and vulnerable, who does that sound like? Does it sound like Jesus, who asked more questions than anyone even though he already knew the answer to all of them? Ask good questions. Most of us prefer to just get angry, to storm off, or to yell.

We clam up or argue or state our case more clearly because that feels safer than being vulnerable and humble enough to ask a question. "Help me understand. Tell me more. I don't know about that." Good questions are not like, "How's it going?" or "What's up?" Those are bad questions. Those are my favorite questions and the ones I ask all the time, but they're not particularly good questions. You might as well just say, "Say something. I'm about to judge you." Those are bad questions.

What I asked my son the other day was, "If the next five years of your life was a chapter in a book, what is that chapter about? Where are you finding joy these days? Tell me about that. What happened? How did you feel about that?" Those are good questions. My favorite is, "How can I pray for you?" You'd be surprised; even people that don't believe in God will answer that question. Don't be obnoxious about your probing, but don't be afraid because people are more willing to talk than most of us believe.

We are made by God for this very thing. Don't assume you already know and get everyone boxed up. Everyone else does that. Take one look at Facebook; everyone thinks they know everything about everybody. But ask one interesting question and you'll shock the world, I'm telling you. Jesus did. He listened to love, and we are followers of his. So starting today, let's bless someone by listening.

Bob Russell: What a powerful reminder of the importance of listening. In our culture where opinions are everywhere and there are more ways than ever to share what we think, what people really long for isn't more voices; it's simply to be heard. There's a deep desire for genuine connection, to know that someone truly cares enough to listen. So go, live like Jesus. Love others by listening well and maybe, just maybe, you'll shock someone today.

Our thanks to Ben for this meaningful message and our thanks as well to Acappella Ministries for their music of worship. If you'd like to hear this program again, simply go to our website at thechristianshour.org. There you can find all of our programs. You can download it and stream it anytime for free. You can also listen on your favorite podcasting platform. Simply search The Christians Hour.

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