People Hear Yet Seldom Listen

We All Have Ears, but Do We All Have ‘Ears that Hear’?

People Hear Yet Seldom Listen

How many times have you been talking with someone, but you could tell what you said was not being heard? They could hear, but they weren’t tuned in to listen. You could tell what you said was going in one ear and out the other.

Now put the shoe on your foot: you’ve probably done this too. Sometimes it’s like we just put our fingers in our ears.

Simon and Garfunkel say it this way: “People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest.”

We engage in what I call ‘selective listening.’

God Gave Us One Mouth and Two Ears

It is jokingly said, “If God wanted us to talk more than listen, he’d have given us one ear and two mouths.”

But too often we behave like we have clogged ears that don’t really listen.

But we like expounding our own opinions and theories more than listening to others.

We often don’t try to get inside of someone else’s head, or see things from their perspective. We just want to tell what we think — and maybe even correct them. We often mostly just listen for a break in what they’re saying so we can speak our mind.

Being a lawyer, I know that most lawyers only hear enough to be able to better defend their position. Their attitude most often is: “My mind is made up! Don’t confuse me with the facts!”

We hear with our ears but we don’t often listen. When we truly listen, it is with our minds and hearts.

We Often Must Tune Unwanted Things Out

I read an article that said we all have ‘a bubble of apathy’ about us. This is something we all must put on, to some degree today, because of all the stuff that bombards us continuously. There is so much advertising, and other things that compete for our attention, that we all have some type of mechanism to tune out what we don’t want to take time to listen to.

Of course we don’t like to hear criticism, but sometimes we need to.

And we often don’t want to hear negative things, or at least not take them into our heart too deeply. I know I see depressing stories, especially on the internet, and I’ll read the headline, so I know what’s going on, but I filter out the story and don’t read all the details.

The problem is that, if we tune people out, it can cause heartbreak, if not strife, contention and anger.

My spirit just can’t house all that stuff. As ‘The Gospel Life Coach,’ I tune into the gospel: it is ‘good news of good things.’

A Chat with The Gospel Life Coach

Too often, we tune God out too. Especially if we think he’s angry at us we tune him out. But three times it says in Hebrews, “Today, if you will hear his voice… don’t close your heart.”

God wants to connect with us personally, and the gospel tells us God is not MAD at us, if we are in relationship with him and his Son. He took out his anger on Jesus on the cross. He has unconditional love for us.

This is impossible for some people to hear — because they don’t love unconditionally.

Too often we ascribe our human characteristics to God. But we’re told God’s thoughts and ways are far above ours (Is 55:8–9). It has jokingly been said, “God created man in his image — and man returns the favor.”

We tend to love conditionally. This says: “If you give me what I want, then I’ll love you and give you what you want.” It’s a type of horse-trading, not love.

But God knows all things about us even if we don’t voice them. We are told that God looks at our heart.

I wrote an article on this: How To Have a Good Heart.