August 29, 2005 saw one of the most deadly storms of recent U.S. history hit the shores of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina unleashed 100+ mph winds and torrential rains across the city. The storm, over 400 miles in diameter, didn’t just leave wind and rain in its wake, it also led to the failure of the city’s aging levee system which caused massive destruction and even death across the city. For anyone who remembers seeing those images, you also saw the chaos and helplessness that followed as people were being rescued off rooftops by boat. Many took shelter in the Superdome which was also a scene of chaos and violence itself. It was a shocking and horrific scene, one which we are not accustomed to seeing in the U.S., and the recovery is still ongoing.
In the days that followed, many of those evacuated from New Orleans came to cities in Texas who rose to the challenge in an honorable and compassionate way by providing shelter, food and other necessary services. One of those places of refuge was the (now dismantled) Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas. It is in that setting this story takes place.
I had been called as part of a team of volunteer chaplains to go in to Reunion and provide pastoral care to one of the first groups that arrived. I don’t mind confessing my anxiety as I entered the arena. I had no idea what to expect and I was fearful considering all I had seen at the Superdome. It was full of people of all ages, some milling about the concourse and some sitting on the rows and rows of green army cots that had been set up on the floor. However, it was quiet and orderly and I was encouraged to see so much help available to the evacuees.
I stood for a moment at the chaplains’ table where we were headquartered and prayed for “holy radar” – that God would lead me to the people who needed my help. As I walked along the rows of cots, mostly empty with a few adults and children scattered about, I noticed in particular one frail woman sitting very properly, knees together and hands folded resting on her lap. I sat down on the cot next to hers, our knees facing, and asked if she would like to talk. She readily accepted my offer.
And then, in a very quiet, measured voice, she began to tell me her story. She and her husband lived in one of the many homes that had flooded and had to be rescued from their rooftop. Not only that, but they were also caretakers to her disabled mother who had been a stroke patient. The mother was totally bed-ridden. As they were deposited from the boat onto dry land, they somehow made their way, with the mother, to the Superdome. Soon after they got there her husband realized it was not a good place to be and insisted they leave. He didn’t know how, but he knew they couldn’t stay in a place so volatile and desperate. So again, all three of them made their way down the highway. They walked for miles, each carrying the disabled mother, until the mother couldn’t take the stress any longer. She died along the way. Another victim of Hurricane Katrina.
The couple had no choice but to continue to walk, in spite of their grief and shock and with the body in tow. Soon after, a truck came along the road, miraculously driven by an acquaintance of the husband. The bed of the truck was already full of people trying to leave the city. The lady went on to tell me how her husband begged the man to please give them a ride as he was their only hope. The driver finally agreed, under one condition, “You can’t bring that body,” he said.
So, with tears streaming down her face but still perfectly composed, the lady looked at me and said, “So I had to leave my mother on the side of the road. That’s the hardest thing I ever did.” And then she said one thing I will never forget as long as I live, “Thank you for letting me tell you my story.”
Thank me? Thank me? I sat in stunned silence as the magnitude of what I had just heard set in. I couldn’t have spoken if I had wanted to. Even today the story overwhelms me. But it taught me a valuable lesson – which is many times the most beneficial thing we can do for each other is to listen to one another’s stories. I am reminded of a quote, “Over and over again, I am struck by the transforming significance and profound simplicity of the ministry of listening.”
James 1:19 gives us a Scriptural example, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” (NKJV). Scripture itself encourages us to be quick to hear and slow to speak. Two perfect guidelines for practicing pastoral care skills to those in need of comfort or just affirmation. Be ready to listen, and slow to speak.
However, this skill does not come naturally to most of us, and to become a good listener requires focus and practice as does the acquisition of any worthwhile skill. Our minds are busy; we’re thinking of what we have to do that day, we’re distracted by our cell-phones, our iPads, our own thoughts, we’re thinking about what we’re going to say next, we glance at our watch, we fidget. In other words, we want our friend to hurry up and talk so we can get on with our lives. But is this helpful? Is it healing? Does this show respect? And most of all, is this how Jesus encountered others?
No. Jesus stopped. He listened. Jesus was fully present with all He encountered – He gave them His full attention. He called people by their name. He let them tell their story. He was never in a hurry. He mourned with them and was present in their pain.
As members of the body of Christ, and particularly women who have sought out this article to read, you WILL have the opportunity to do this. When people are in crisis, grief or pain, they need someone to share it with. Always remember, at times like this your presence and keen listening may be your greatest gift. Dietrich Bonheoffer said, “Christians so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others – that is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.”
And here’s another Bonheoffer quote of encouragement, “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship is listening to them. Just as the love of God begins with listening to His word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is listening to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His word, but also lends us His ear.”
So how do we do this? What are the skills necessary to become a good listener? Below I will list 10 Tools for Effective Listening. Prayerfully and patiently begin to incorporate these into the next time you are in the position someone needs a sympathetic ear.
Face the speaker – maintain eye contact
Be attentive, yet relaxed
Keep an open mind – do not judge
Listen to the words and try to picture in your mind the event or thought being described
Do not interrupt!
Do not impose your solutions or try to fix
Wait for the speaker to pause to ask limited clarifying questions. Ask questions for clarification only, not to probe for further details or to be intrusive.
Try to feel what the speaker is feeling
Give the speaker regular feedback; restate, summarize, reflect, validate, encourage
Pay attention to what isn’t said – feelings, facial expressions, gestures, posture or other non-verbal cues
Please note that you should always hold everything your friend has said in the strictest of confidence, even if that has not been stated. People are sometimes unusually open and vulnerable in times of crisis and nothing they say needs to be repeated outside of the confidence in which they have spoken to you.
Perhaps another way to look at being a good listener is to look at the other side of the coin. How do you know when someone is NOT listening? My husband and I were at a Family Life conference once and the speaker shared the following. After the session, I quickly went to the front and asked if he would share this with me, which I copied from his notes (written by Dave Rober):
I’m Not Listening
When I’m thinking about an answer while others are talking, I’m not listening.
When I give unsolicited advice, I’m not listening.
When I suggest they shouldn’t feel the way they do, I’m not listening.
When I apply a quick fix, I’m not listening.
When I fail to acknowledge their feelings, I’m not listening.
When I fail to maintain eye contact, I’m not listening.
When I don’t ask follow-up questions, I’m not listening.
When I top their story with a bigger, better story of my own, I’m not listening.
When they share a difficult experience and I counter with one of my own, I’m not listening.
Really, all I have to do is listen. I don’t have to talk, just listen.
We are all guilty of some of these, and most of the time we mean well – we really do want to help and be a good friend, we just don’t have the tools. It has been the goal of this article to give you the ability and some concrete methods of being the good listener and friend we desire to be. Be patient with yourself. As stated earlier, proficiency requires practice, but you can do this. Not only will you succeed, with the power of the Holy Spirit, you can be an outstanding representative of Him.
You have sought this website and this article because you are in ministry or you are looking for Bible-based tools to help you in your journey. Hopefully, you see now the tool of being a good listener doesn’t just have value within the body of Christ – it has value in every area of your life. These skills transfer. You will be a better spouse, parent, employee, professional, staff member, or whatever. Ask God to help you do this – He will. And the more you employ the practice of being a good listener, the better you will become, showing His love to all through your compassion and presence.
“The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive.”
It doesn’t matter what it means to me; it matters what it means to God.
Study by Barna group – number 1 Christian research group:The problem facing Christianity is that they are not open to being proven wrong or learning new insights.Both clergy and laity – indifference to and acknowledge a lack of evaluation – “we have all the answers already”.John Calvin – Is it faith to understand nothing and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?Enemy’s job is to steal, kill and destroy the truth.
Abraham Lincoln – the best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend. – Satan therefore comes as an angel of truth.
Top Four Events in human historyGiving of the commandments in the gardenGiving of the commandments at Mt SinaiBirth of the MessiahDeath, burial and resurrection of the Messiah
The enemy is out to make us misguided on those 4 events.
Now we will focus on the birth and Resurrection of the Messiah
Noah’s great grandson, Nimrod (mighty hunter) – built the tower of Babel, city of Ninevah, etc.
Ninmod married Semeramus. When died he was made the son god, Baal.
Semeramus was impregnated by a ray from Nimrod, and gave birth to Tammuz, who became ruler in place of Nimrod; One day out hunting and he was killed by wild boar.
Every year after he died, for forty days before the spring equinox they fasted (he was 40 years old) – where we get Lent.
When Semeramus dies she becomes Ishtar or Easter (the bare breasted fertility goddess) – she is the god of the sunrise or the east.
First Sunday of the spring equinox – East Stars sun day, sunrise service, impregnate virgins on the altar, then 1 year later they would sacrifice the 3 month old babies on the altar and dip eggs into their blood, the eggs were a symbol of fertility, they believed the earth was born out of a giant egg
When Semeramus dies he threw her back down and landed in the Euphrates river and turned a bird into an egg laying rabbit – 3000 year old Babylonian legend where we get the Easter.
Eggs, Easter bunny, dying of Easter eggs, Lent – practiced a 1000 years before Jesus was even born – Easter ham eaten in commemoration of the wild board that killed Tammuz.
Other names for Ishtar (Semeramus) and Tammuz:Phoenicia – call Asteroff and BaalEgypt – Isis and OsirisGreece – Aphrodite and AdoniRome – Venus and Cupid (Cupid was baby Tammuz)Far East – Tammuz was called Zoro Aster (literally “the seed of Easter”)
What did all of the disciples do in the spring that just so happens to be a the time of Easter?
Lu 22:19 … DO THIS in remembrance of Me. – 1 Co 5:8 keep the feast of passover Can we decide how to worship or does God decide?
Lev 18:30 Keep my requirements, not detestable customs
I think that it is important that we have a true perspective on who God is and how He actually operates. So, was Jesus happy and did He ever laugh? Of course, but what might be the most prevalent characteristics we should focus on in terms of who God and Jesus are?
You have probably seen one of the happy Jesus pictures. Consider the following occurrences in the Bible (these searches were all done with the NIV version):
Lord and anger – appears together 131 times.
Lord and laugh(s) – only 3 times Lord and joy – only once. Jesus and joy – only 2 times: Jesus and happy or Lord and happy – does not exist. Jesus and smile(s) or Lord and smile(s) – does not exist.
I have recently run across some information that puts together how to understand some of the thinking of our founding fathers that they probably took for granted, but that we have lost contact with. These vital principles are key to understanding the whole idea of America and without them being recovered in our nation, will lead to utter disaster, and we are on the brink.
When Benjamin Franklin stepped out on the street from the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked him, what kind of government we were to have, and he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” I will try to explain his comment and some of the thinking behind one of the most spectacular human events in the history of mankind.
Never before in all of history had there been a nation run by the concept of Self-Government. The immigrants had left places of tyranny and so to guard against the over-reach of government they formed the Articles of Confederation which proved to be so weak in authority that it amounted to little more than ‘Pay your taxes if you feel like it’. It didn’t work out well. The Convention was supposed to fix that.
They realized that to have freedom there was a delicate balance between government and personal rights. As an example if you wanted law and order in your “community” you could authorize a sheriff with some power to arrest people and put them in jail. But if you gave him too much power he could gather a bunch of goons and take over the town. It would be the same with a state or national government and that was a VERY HOT DEBATE in the Convention.
Self-government was an idea that had never been tried and the men in the Convention were making history. Our founding fathers, for the most part, were all men who believed in virtue. Not all were orthodox Christians but all were men who agreed that for self-government and the idea of freedom and liberty to have any chance it had to be built on faith and virtue. Many of them, like George Washington, were quoted as saying that our government was only suited for a religious and moral people. Our country was built foundationally upon religion and morality. Without that WE WILL CRUMBLE.
After all, the idea of Self-Government is built upon the idea of Self-control. Self-control which produces virtue and morality comes from a worldview. And the worldview that they had witnessed was that where Christianity was practiced, crime was low. This is what we have forgotten and MUST be regained if we are to sustain as a nation. Follow the line of thinking: 1 Self-government, freedom, and liberty must be accompanied by 2 morality and virtue and that requires a basis of 3 faith. But a proper true faith requires freedom. True faith can’t be a forced national religion or it won’t be a true, self-practiced, believing, self-controlling, faith. Freedom of religion is so fundamental that it was primary in the Amendments. When you take away a person’s freedom of religion you destroy virtue and without virtue a nation will not stand. American idealism is not built on our people, because American people came from other places. What makes America special is we are the one nation built upon an idea, the idea of freedom in self-government, which by necessity includes morality and religion.
It is in this idea that we can take pride, not because we are arrogantly better than other people, but this principle of freedom, symbolized by our Statue of Liberty and our Pledge of Allegiance, which states “liberty and justice for ALL” reaches to the ends of the earth.
These principles that formed our nation’s beginnings has caused our nation to have been the most charitable and giving nation in all history, even to the extent that American blood has been spilt the world over to help others gain and keep the principle of liberty alive.
Today however, we are in grave danger of freedom disappearing from not just America but the whole planet, as the idea of religion, morality, and patriotism is being rapidly removed and even mocked and abused from every aspect of our culture. Unless these concepts are recovered through proper education of principles of truth and freedom our freedoms will be lost.
My, off the cuff, thoughts on political correctnessPolitical correctness, which is now the “required” standard, is pretty much about making everyone feel comfortable and unoffended. We don’t want anyone to feel bad about anything.
This falls into the liberal agenda of saying that everything’s okay; you’re okay, I’m okay. The fact is, you’re not OK and I’m not okay and we’re all going to hell without Jesus.
It’s not loving to not tell people the truth, that without Christ you are going to hell, but that is an inconvenient and uncomfortable truth. In First Corinthians 6 it’s pointed out that anyone who does wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God. It gives a list of 10 different beliefs and lifestyles that are not acceptable. Two of those 10 are directly related to the LGBT lifestyle. But all of us would be included in at least one item on the list of unaccepatbles, somewhere at some point. Christ did not come to this earth to make everyone feel good, he came to tell the truth, which was not accepted by many.
He claimed a very offensive truth, that He is the only way. Political correctness is more concerned about not offending that it is about sharing the truth.
Instead of using “Our citizenship is in heaven” as an excuse to not be involved, it should be the contrary because our main concern is no longer the rules of this world.
Something feels very wrong about all this political correctness stuff. We seem to be more concerned about getting along than we are about sharing truth. Yes, we need to get along but not to the exclusion of truth. Can we really get along that well until truth is central?
Jesus as well as Paul, Peter and the rest, shared the truth all the time. Our relationships are going to be very shallow if we side step the truth to stay comfortable and appear nice.
My friends thoughts on political correctnessMy verses are The Great Commission where it says “…teach them EVERYTHING I commanded.” That is a lot more than the simple gospel or a happy talk verse or two. And the main passage was the whole of chapter 1 of Isa. I’ll paraphrase:My people are dumber than a jackass. Read it! That is exactly what it says.They are rebellious and EVIL. Why? Because they don’t bring JUSTICE to the land. The whole chapter is civil government language of courts, lawyers, laws, rulers, cities, countries, foreigners, pleading cases of widows, orphans, bribes. This is not synagogue or church language it is the institution of civil government that God ordained for us to take care of.They don’t connect the judgements God is bringing upon them to their lack of Justice in the land.Because of this God rejects their worship practice and refuses to HEAR THEIR PRAYERS.In the end he says he will BURN THEM UP.
That is what I think of ignorant Christians who forget we have a God who actually expects us to not just love but to execute judgement with the sword HE gave us…Civil Government. I have DEEP passion against people who constantly cherry pick a couple of verses and make false doctrine from a verse or two.
Read Psalms 109 and 69. David prays to God to burn people in Hell and even have no pity on the sinners kids. What do these sweet talkers have to say about Biblical prayers of that nature?
Yes I am for love, grace, mercy, and all that, but that is only one side of the Christian coin. If a coin has heads (or even love) on both sides of the coin it is a counterfeit.
Everywhere Peter, Paul, and Jesus went there was civil uprising because they challenged the status quo of government. Why were they all executed by civil government anyway?
