August 11, 2024, Message by Jamie Johnson
It’s good. Okay. Actually, I’ll repeat myself, because I want to see if Kevin’s actually. If. Does he listen to us? It’s pretty remarkable that he lets us talk about whatever we want to talk about. I think that’s a dangerous move on his part. But if you’re listening, Kevin, I want to know.
Okay, so, you know, Kevin’s in California this Sunday and next Sunday. And so Ats and I are taking turns this time. I’m giving Stevin a break.
Last week, Sophia and I were at a debate camp, and I attended because I thought I could learn a few things. But I didn’t realize I was going to learn a lot more than I paid for.
The very first part of the debate camp was on communications and what kind of communicators we are. I learned so much about myself, learned so much about my children and my family. Being an analytical type, I started analyzing everybody. But that’s not the point of it.
Learning how to communicate and some of knowing more about having some self-awareness, that’s a lacking piece for me. And it reflects the kind of communicator I am, which is a direct communicator. I really have been thinking about that a lot.
I’m also reading a book for a class I’m taking this fall called Listening for Heaven’s Sake. Have any of you seen this book? It’s a recommended book for parents of homeschoolers. And it’s in my class that I am taking on classical education. But it’s written by who? Is it written by?
Gary Sweeney, Dave Ping, and Anna Clippard. So I have heard some parts of this book before from a lecture I went to, but it didn’t really stick with me because I think the time. You know how God, just in time, you get a little bit of, hey, you could improve your communication style. And then, oh, by the way, listening, for heaven’s sake, is on their docket. And it really complements this idea of communicating.
So we have a problem in the western world. A problem and maybe even the entire world. It might just be a nature of a human problem, which is that we have a poverty in the quality of our relationships.
Partly it comes from seeking pleasure when we think that it’s happiness. And if you think back, if you remember the name Howard Hughes, he was a famous, very wealthy man from California with the stars. He had his own, I think he had his own airline company.
For a while, he chased after all the things, very rich. But by the time he died, he was six foot two. He weighed about 100 pounds.
He was paranoid and had isolated himself and died a miserable death. What did he chase after? Did he chase after pleasures and money and fame? And what did that get him in the end?
So do we really believe that pleasure equals happiness? And is that what we’re chasing after? And because we have hectic schedules and social pressures, and some of us come from broken families, there’s a lot of mobility in America especially. We move all the time for jobs. We see this downward spiral of unhealthy, indifferent, and destructive relationships.
And it’s when this book was written 20 years ago, Sweeney was saying that it was nearing a crisis. And here we are, 20, almost 30 years later.
I’d say that most of us would agree that we do have a society of broken relationships, leading to high divorce rates, increased single parenting of children, increased promiscuity. Suicide and homicide in America are right up there at the top of the list in the world for this kind of brokenness.
Families are suffering from the effects. Oh, I have this thing. That’s right. Oh, you did it for me. Okay, so families suffer from the effects of depression, alcoholism, physical abuse, sexual abuse. And it’s a thing.
Pastors and the church staff are overwhelmed with the emotional needs that we bring to them, the volume of people. And so the question that Sweeney asked was, how could the lay church, how could the lay people, the ordinary people of the church, come alongside and help in some aspects with this? What could we do?
And could we provide some kind of support in the church, but also at home and at work, and provide help for this complex problem that includes not only our spiritual health, but emotional and mental health? And so the answer to that is, yes. Yes, we can.
And that comes through the very first step in a whole series. But this is where we want to start, as Christians, as laypeople, is learning how to listen well. And so they’ve called it listening for heaven’s sake, which I like.
So how can we listen with greater insight and understanding? How could we improve compassion and friendliness to others and develop not only greater respect for others, but also self-respect and increase our sense of self-worth?
That’s a big problem for us, even within the church. There’s some more things there. But this really struck me because I was thinking about communication, but also as my children are moving on into their adult lives, going off to college next week and one that’s a senior, and thinking about what does that look like post, you know, childhood?
How do I transition to listen well to my children? So it had a lot. I’m preaching to myself for you, just in case you were wondering who this is aimed at. It was towards my own heart. Okay?
And so how can we experience more of God’s love and the fruit of the Spirit? And so what is the fruit of the Spirit? I had way too many slides, so I had to cut them down. And so if I click and go back, it’s because I took that slide out for your sake.
So you didn’t give you words. Too many words. Okay.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
22But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23, NLT)
How do we grow in these qualities? I hear those all the time. We’ve heard them many times, right? And we sometimes even try to memorize all of the fruits. But how do we actually grow in the fruit of the Spirit? And what is that going to look like in our relationships?
The fruit of the Spirit mirrors closely, parallels closely the same skills that we want to bring to listening as well.
They found that people who are effective listeners and who genuinely care about people have those qualities of the fruit of the Spirit.
So, developing sound listening, communication, and caring skills based on Christ-centered teaching, those fruit of the Spirit would lead us well.
And one thing we have to think about is a balance of ourselves and others with God at the core of that.
If we get too overly focused on ourselves and self-centered, and we can’t think about others too much, it’s not great. But it’s also easy to tip the other way on the seesaw, where we care so much about others and take care of their needs that we forget to take care of ourselves.
So keep that in mind as we talk about this idea of listening to others. Another thing we want to keep in mind is all the facets of personhood. As we think about what we could do to listen better.
And when we think about God and all that he is, we can describe a few of his characteristics that we, as Imago Dei, having the image of God and reflecting him, have as well.
Thinking, our will, emotions, behavior, relationships, our physical body, and our community. These all pour into what we’re trying to communicate to others. Not what we often think about when we’re listening to people, but that full picture of an integrated person.
And furthermore, how do we integrate back into all the facets that we are?
And because of sin, not only that, but also because of sin, our human nature reflects very little of God’s image. We might see emotions that are volatile, minds irrational, wills weakened, behaviors harmful, bodies diseased, relationships sinful, and family systems unhealthy. So depressing. Right to that one. Okay, you’re welcome.
How do we come back into wholeness? It all comes back to his grace, right? We start there. His grace.
But for God, who sent Jesus to restore our relationship with himself, only then can we try to even attempt to bring healthy balance to our own lives. So, as you can imagine, in order. We’re good, Kathleen. Okay. Right. There we go. So, as you can imagine, in order to develop healthy listening skills, the very first step would be to have Jesus in our hearts. That’s the first and most preeminent requisite to complete restoration. And only then can we walk in his fullness.
But it’s a lifelong process, and it takes time and effort in our willing cooperation. I think that’s why they call it progressive sanctification. It’s not going to happen overnight. In our instant gratification world, it would be nice if it was on Pinterest or YouTube and somebody showed it to us, right? And we could just imitate it.
A big problem for us Christians is we wonder. We feel a little bit of shame and guilt because we think, well, wasn’t that all taken care of at the cross? Aren’t we new creations?
And the old is gone, the new has come. Sweeney says this is one of the most common questions he’s asked as a counselor because people that come to him are typically Christians. And so they have a lot of baggage because they don’t understand, and often we don’t.
Why do we still have problems in our relationships as Christians? Because we think that we should all be perfect at this point, right? Or at least somewhat closer, which causes shame and confusion because we think we shouldn’t have any conflicts.
And if we do, it’s our fault or somebody else’s fault, you know? But this bit about it was all taken care of at the cross is the beginning of that relationship and that restoration with God. And it’s a process. It’s not the end of the journey.
And so the analogy is just like when babies are born, that’s the beginning of life. But then they’re going to grow, and there’s a lot of growing pains and a lot of mess that happens with kids, but that’s the beauty of it in the end, right?
So Jesus, it’s going to get us there. So they call their system the teleos system. And teleos is Greek for restoring wholeness because we have all these fractured parts of ourselves that’s caused by sin.
And we’re looking at a way to restore. Sin has four major aspects to it. We have rebellion, which is what we’re most used to comparing. Right? Like rebellion of violating the Ten Commandments, not keeping. Yeah. Being disobedient, which results in estrangement from God because we’ve broken his law. Which leads to moral guilt.
Not necessarily emotional guilt, but the moral guilt that we are in the wrong. However, that guilt does lead to shame. Oftentimes it leads to shame, but shame is more of a distortion of our sense of self.
It can be internal remorse, but it’s often a rejection of self and a condemnation of self, which leads us to hide our true selves from others and cuts us off from receiving help and love and affects our identity.
When I was going through my cancer treatment, and really, that’s a shocker to be diagnosed with cancer.
And it does make you think for a time or two. So I had some time to reflect on, you know, what. And we always. I’m a kind of person that wants to know the why. Why? And the answer is, just so you know, the disclaimer is, I still don’t know why.
But I got over trying to figure out the why, because the why doesn’t necessarily matter so much. There could be all kinds of reasons for that why.
But what does matter is that Jesus loves us enough to pull us out of the pit, and he does want to heal, and he does want to restore.
But for me, part of that journey was, there was a lot of self-condemnation. Even though I knew Jesus had forgiven me and I was a new creation, I still beat myself up inside. I had to work through that part of my spiritual journey during my physical healing as well, just in case anybody struggles with that.
It’s the real thing that leads to bondage, which are persistent patterns. We call them habits, really persistent patterns of behavior, of rebellion and guilt and shame that, over time, weaken our ability to destroy, to weaken our ability to initiate healthy change.
And sometimes we get so stuck in our sin and rebellion that we have difficulty even recognizing healthy choices. This leads us into a cycle of despair and dysfunction, of rebellion, disobedience, which leads to moral guilt. Conviction, which can lead to shame, keeps us in this bondage to sin.
And it goes round and round, and this spiritual, mental, and emotional blindness contributes to addiction, compulsion, disease, and feelings of hopelessness.
And the thing is, we’re all born into bondage, into sin. We’re all born into this. Not only does it affect ourselves, but it adversely affects the rest of the family, producing more dysfunction and problems. And it can multiply from generation to generation as we teach these cultures and these habits to our children and receive them.
Right. That’s sort of the attitudes, the beliefs, the habits, and the relationship patterns of.
And we have some defense mechanisms that we use. We deny reality of our responsibility. We blame shift to others. We suppress our true self. So nobody knows, like our deep, dark self.
In fact, we often don’t really know a person except for that tip of the iceberg of the person, what they’re willing to share. That’s open, their open area. It’s very, very small, but beneath that area, there are defenses and a whole array, a system of defense that include our memories, our thoughts, our experiences, and our beliefs that we hide in shame.
So we have guarded areas and then hidden areas and then even unknown areas that sometimes we don’t even know about.
Okay, so how do we escape this awful bondage of sin and find freedom? Right. Jesus is the first step. But then how do we apply grace to each other? And what is grace, anyway?
What was that? America’s grace? Yeah, what is grace? Oh, did you say unmerited favor? I thought you said America’s favor. Yes, unmerited favor. Thank you. Unmerited, unearned favor and mercy that God extends to us. It’s a wonderful gift that’s undeserved.
It’s freely given. But we must open our hearts to receive his grace.
All right, so how? Now that we’ve, like. Dude, that was heavy. I’m feeling like there’s this whole part of me I don’t even know, and I want to open up to God’s grace. But how can we, this crisis that we have, when we want to help as a lay church, not only others, but really ourselves as well. How do we help? By listening well. And there are three keys to this top layer.
This is our initial step in this whole process, and it’s to have warm, empathetic, and deep respect. And I’m laughing because how many of you, there are four types of communicators out there. Four styles of communication: direct, narrative, empathetic, and logical.
Forty percent of the population in general is a direct narrative. Forty percent are empathetic, 15% are narrative, and 5% are logical. And I’m laughing and smiling because I’m a direct, and Sophia’s an empathetic and directs.
So, about half of the population, we have a really hard time picking up nonverbal cues, physical cues that people are giving us or that we’re giving to people because we’re all about the words. I’m going to listen to your words and see what you’re saying. And don’t ask me why we can’t do the nonverbals. I don’t know if it’s just like too much information. I’m wondering.
Empathetics are the other large part of the population, and they are all about the feelings. They are very careful about what they say because they don’t want to hurt feelings, and they’re very sensitive to the nonverbal cues.
So what an interesting combination, right, of these directs and these empathetics. And then you’ve got the logicals and the narratives in there, too. But the real deal is here with the directs and the empathetics.
So that really hit a hot button for me because I want to get better at my nonverbal, like, assessing it.
And then also what I’m putting out there. So warm, empathetic listening and deep respect, right? To overcome these feelings that come derived from sin, right? Shame and rejection.
The memories, the secret longings, the unfulfilled desires, the things that we’ve done wrong, the things that others have wronged us with, both rational and irrational fears, and the pain of embarrassing secrets. How do we help?
Some of the ways that we help, that are not warm, empathetic, or deeply respectful are.
We deny, we joke, we withdraw, we attack, we work excessively, we rationalize, we control, we become perfectionists, or we might even spiritualize the problem.
And if we think about the heart as a well-defended fortress, at the first sign of a threat, the doors are going to slam shut, closing it off from the help of others and leaving us alone with our own pain, which isn’t what we really want for ourselves or for our brothers and sisters, right?
This poem was in the book, and I really liked it so much because being a direct, I’m not good with emotional, just like disregard it, thinking it’s not important, knowing it’s very important.
But I love this poem because he’s talking about even the most callous or person who comes across as gruff, still feels this.
I present to you parts of myself. Slowly, if you are patient and tender, I will open drawers that mostly stay closed and bring out places and people and things, sounds and smells, loves and frustrations, hopes and sadness, bits and pieces of, in my case, five decades of life that have been grabbed off in chunks and found lying in my hands.
It’s much easier to read than to say they have eaten their way into my heart altogether. You and I will never see them. They are me. If you regard them lightly, deny that they are important, or worse, judge them.
I will quietly, slowly begin to wrap them up in small pieces of velvet, like worn silver and gold jewelry, tuck them away in a small wooden chest of drawers and clothes. It’s a beautiful poem expressing the vulnerability of our hearts.
And it makes sense why 50% of the population tries to deny the feelings and the other 50% of the population is trying to understand the feelings. Okay, so tenderness and patience and thinking back, right? That wasn’t patience and gentleness. Two of the fruits of the Spirit are essential when we’re dealing with issues of the heart.
And if someone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. Right. That gives new meaning to that word. Gently.
Anybody want some tissues? All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Okay.
Grace shows our care and respect, which are more likely to encourage people to open up rather than trying to fix them or make them simply confront their sinful behavior. That spoke to me, and it’s God’s love, not his wrath, that has called us to repentance.
Similarly, it’s the love of others that gives us the strength to examine the secret places of our heart. Patient and loving care are what are going to help us overcome our sense of shame and self-condemnation.
And just like John first, in John, he said, love people just as they are, to give them the courage to walk in the light. To walk in the light as he is in the light.
Okay, so not only do we need Jesus in our heart, and we need to have this understanding of the well-guarded fortress that it is, but another piece that we need to add to our repertoire is understanding why we’re worth so much.
Forgiveness is the deal maker, right? That gets us into the kingdom, and we are born into it as a new creation. But still, as human beings, whether forgiven or not, we are made in the image of God, and all of humanity, all people, are worthy of His love.
And it’s interesting that the controversy over we were made a little lower than the angels in Psalm 8. Is that really the angels, the Elohim there God? Or is Elohim meaning the angels or God himself? And there’s lots of discussion back and forth.
But wouldn’t it be interesting to wonder if we were made just a little lower than God?
And I think as humans, whether that’s true or not, whichever way you fall on that argument, I think it would also be true that as humans, we should think of ourselves as more valuable than we often do.
We just don’t, right? Because of our shame and condemnation. So we’re worth more than we think. And really the best reason to believe that is because Jesus died for us.
Why would he die for something he could just throw away? We’re not trash. So understanding God’s highest sense of our personal worth gives me a reason to esteem myself.
And it’s because not that I think so highly of myself, but because God thinks highly of me. Then I can also have self-respect for me too.
And it’s easy with 8 billion people on the planet to not be able to comprehend how He could do that for everyone. And that’s what makes us have personality, right? The person of us. All right. Yeah.
So, adoption into God’s family is that key to biblical self-respect. It’s almost as, it’s almost like the story of the prince and the pauper, where the pauper, the poor guy who put on the clothes, they traded places, and he put on the clothes of the prince. But he still couldn’t think differently. He couldn’t think like a prince because in his mind he was still a pauper.
And often I think that’s the story of the Christian, right? We have been made princes and princesses of God, right, kings, you know, under His dominion.
But we still think of ourselves as a sinner, and we don’t realize the value of the adoption into His family.
But I did like this, right, that the adoption is the foundation for the self-worth, to deal with the scars of fear and anxiety, of hiding and self-hatred that’s caused by shame.
And it doesn’t really help that evolution teaches that we’re made out of primordial soup and there was no design to that. And so what is that worth? It’s worth nothing. That’s where our culture feeds into that.
Okay, so how to communicate?
So, communication is encoding and decoding. We want to say something to you, so we encode a message, we send it to you, and then you’re supposed to decode it. And that’s communication.
Oftentimes, though, we miss the mark on understanding what the message was that was sent to us. These misinterpretations cause so many errors, particularly on the part of the listener. Right? Impatience, jumping to conclusions, jumping to causes the why. Unresolved issues, fears, inadequacy, over-identification, and under-identification.
Did you know your brain can think at least five times faster than you can speak?
And so often we are thinking way ahead of what somebody is saying and already crafting a response before we finish hearing what they’re talking about. We probably miss a good 75% of what they’re talking about.
Slowing down, being present, and slowing down is a key to listening well. It requires a lot of energy and focus, and sometimes we’re short on both of those.
Okay. And. Right. We know the Bible says be patient with everyone. Right? So that’s. And patience was one of our five nine gifts. I’m not going to go into all those.
There’s more on all that. But we’re going to get to. Sometimes our responses make us into very bad advisors.
And as you read this, do you identify with being one or two of these types of people where somebody’s telling you something and you become an interrogator? I’m a full blown interrogator. What happened? Who was there? Where did he go? Who’s doing what? It’s overwhelming. There are too many questions.
Or you might be the general, where you just start giving advice, like, okay, here’s what you need to do. Go to this place, give them this thing, and then it’ll be fine.
Or maybe you’re a Pharisee where you said, well, I hear what you’re saying, but what you should have done was x, y, z, and then this would not have happened to you.
Or maybe you’re a labeler where you identify the problem with, you know, go through your series of problems that you’ve heard before. You pick the box, stick it in that box, and put a label on it, and it doesn’t really matter what else the person is saying. That’s the box they’re in.
Or maybe you’re a prophet where you predict a future of doom and gloom for that person, and I’m guilty of that. If you don’t do your math, then, you know, blah, blah, doom and gloom, poor kids.
Or maybe you’re a historian where narratives tend to be this way. you’re like, oh, that happened to me, too. And now it’s all about you instead of them and their story.
Or you’re a quick change artist.
You don’t like where this is going, so you’re like, well, that reminds me of my uncle who once went fishing, and now it’s totally deflected from the person.
Have you ever talked to someone who’s like Mister Deodorant, where they can’t stand bad stories, unpleasant information, and so they’re going to change it and say everything will be fine? Don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal. A couple more grandma chicken soup acts of kindness, which are really great. We’re going to hope that these acts of kindness will make your problem disappear and comfort you.
Or do you have cliches and quips that you use that are bumper sticker type answers? And then the robber who knows exactly how you feel before even taking the time to listen to the whole story. These are our typical go-tos for responding while we’re listening or how our position of listening. But maybe those aren’t so great.
This is a big eye chart, and the part that we’re talking about tonight is just the stuff in the green. So the seeker is the person who is talking.
And he used, because he does a lot of counseling, he didn’t want to call it clients and that sort of thing. So he started using these words seeker and helper. But we’re the helper by listening. So the person talking is talking and explaining something or sharing their open part.
We’re going to use for our listening skills, our warmth, our empathy, and our respect because we want to listen. For heaven’s sake, if we do it well, it can lead them into that area that’s a little more uncomfortable for them, which is kind of a yellow light.
These are like green light. People can usually share a little bit. If they get a good response and they trust, then they might share a little more, and they actually might come to some of their own self-understanding.
Especially if we show genuineness and concreteness along with them. In self-disclosure, speaking truth in love, renewing the mind helps to free the family and embrace God’s grace. The part that’s the hardest to get through is eventually getting to a position.
You can’t really read it, but it says down in the red is accountability and action on the part of the speaker through. If we don’t want to have to get to this point of confrontation or immediacy, but if we are trusted enough, we’ve made it into that part of the heart where they are trying to break a bondage of a habit, then that’s where that accountability could come in handy for them.
But keep in mind, we’re just at the top level of learning how to listen.
Well, in order for people to feel they can trust us, we have to be trustworthy, right? It’s a process of exploration and hopefully an understanding between an external hurt, external habit, and an internal hurt that we have.
Maybe I always react in a certain way. Have you ever had that, where you react a certain way and it has nothing to do with the person that was talking to you or an incident that happened?
It was just a trigger that set you off because we probably have an internal hurt that we don’t know about. Or if you’re a direct, you refuse to know about because you don’t deal well with emotions.
But if we can get it to an understanding of that external habit and that internal hurt, then that can lead us to discover new ways to grow and move towards change.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on more of his telios of that process.
And we’re going to focus just on the listening piece, which are the three of warmth, empathy, and respect.
As I was going along thinking about this discussion, I thought it was beautiful. He mentioned this, and so I wanted to share it with you. Thinking of the human heart, right? Because God says we are the temple, but thinking of the heart as that holy of holies spot, and having tenderness for our own heart and the hearts of others.
So go gently and solemnly and bring peace as you listen.
I say you, and I’m talking about me. All right? So warmth. The direct resting habit, my facial resting habit as a direct communicator, is a scowl or an ironic smile because I also, like, find the funny in everything, which is not good because a lot of things are not funny or shouldn’t be made fun of.
And so I learned at my communications class at Sophia’s debate camp that I should market my face better to reflect my actual feelings inside, which are neutral. So a smile would be nice. Right? Tell my face that I actually don’t.
I’m not mad at anybody. That just made me laugh because I’m like, that’s so true. Stefan would come and he’s like, why are you mad? I’m not mad. you’re mad about something. Like, no, now I’m mad.
So if I could just say, hey, it’s good to see you smile, because I genuinely like to see him. I could offer a smile. So think about everybody who does like to be invited for a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or at least a cup of water, right?
Jesus even tells us to give a cup of water hospitality. And then, hospitality is what makes us feel at home. It communicates love and care, and it makes us feel warm and accepted.
So by listening, we can communicate that we do have interest and love for this person. But how much of that actually comes from words and how much from the nonverbals? What’s your guess? How much? Oh, it’s already up there.
You know, it’s broken down into 50% nonverbals, 40% tone of voice that’s my other nemesis and 10% the actual words. That’s it.
Can you believe that? Not a good scenario for a direct or logical communicator. We’re like, I don’t know. What are you trying to say? Okay. And then the empathetics are like, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying. I can already tell you’re upset.
Okay, so what can we do to display warmth? Now, a lot of you, at least half of you, are already empathetic, so you know this stuff. But for the sake of the directs out there, we have to tell us, teach us, what are some of the things we need to do.
We’re talking about how our mouth, our head, our face, what all these things are saying. Our shoulders, our arms, our legs, and our feet.
So, facial expressions. The head tilt says a lot, right? The sagging shoulders. How about this one? Right? That’s not good. That’s going to be bad news. Or the legs crossed, if you’re sitting down, that can be an indicator. Clenched hands, maybe a quivering chin. Sorry about that. Fidgeting and foot tapping can indicate nervousness.
How about, do you have any nervous habits? Like, do you look at your watch a lot or your phone? Nowadays, I’m a knuckle popper. That’s my nervous habit or my resting habit when I’m waiting for the traffic light to change. I think it’s a symptom of impatience.
Maybe you look out the window while somebody’s talking to you, or you’re yawning, you’re sighing, you’re scratching, or you’re playing with your hair, your clothes. It’s really obvious when we see somebody else do it. Very difficult to be self-aware, to notice when we do it.
And often we get defensive when somebody points it out to us. So learning to be self-aware of our non-verbal communication is key.
So my guy here, Gary Sweeten, says 80% of family conflict comes from poor communication and our deficiency in ability to express warmth and caring. 80%.
And when we think about relationships, not only in the family of parents and children, but thinking about teachers and students or doctors and patients. Huge, right? When we talk about the bedside manner of a doctor, we’re talking about these skills that those doctors are lacking.
They’re probably all direct communicators. Okay? So we can work on those. And with the help of our empathetics, we can learn what those are and how often we do them and change, because they don’t necessarily mean what we’re expressing. But we’re certainly turning people off.
How about the tone of voice and also the emphasis? What does it say when I say, I didn’t say your outfit was silly? Yeah, but I kind of agree with her. I didn’t say your outfit was silly. It’s a little bit of denial, right?
I didn’t say your outfit was silly or looked silly. And I didn’t say your outfit looked silly. So that tone that can be nervous, irritated, laughing, or mocking, even our pitch can indicate fear or excitement, embarrassment, or pride. So when we’re talking about those voice cues, we’re talking not only tone of voice, but emphasis and thinking about how we’re delivering it to get across the listening and the care that we want to get across.
So here’s his little mnemonic for us to remember, the body cues.
First of all, the tone should be our tone of voice when we’re listening and responding. It should be low, soft, clearly audible, rich in inflection and variation, but relaxed.
So we’re thinking about our hospitality and offering somebody a drink. Opening up that space for conversation is sensitive seating, openness, leaning, appropriate eye contact, relaxation, touch, environmental awareness, and accommodating attitude.
And I think that’s why. Have any of you had the experience where you go on a car ride with somebody and you can have a really good conversation in the car that you can’t at home? Or, I don’t know, does that happen to just me? Just me.
I think the reason why car rides work so well is because the seating’s already arranged, the eye contact is already taken care of. you’re not expected to look at each other because you’re side by side instead of face to face, and you’re stuck there, you can’t go. you’re a captive audience.
Okay. But if you’re not in the car and you’re not having a good conversation, right? Generally, you want to sit within an arm’s length of somebody. If you’re sitting too far away, they don’t feel comfortable or invited.
Face to face, meaning you’re looking at them, but not necessarily your body straight on, because that’s intimidating. It can be so the body a little bit to the side, but making eye contact and facial contact. And if you’re standing, invite people, if you’re really intent on listening, to sit down.
Because standing, we have that sense of immediacy and time, and we need to move on, and people get tired. So those things being within an arm’s distance, we’re looking at them, but we’re not giving them the full aggressive frontal attack.
Sitting down is what invites people to share, and it lowers tension and defensiveness. Openness, emotional and spiritual openness, is communicated primarily through our posture and body language, such as arms crossed, legs crossed. Keep your feet on the floor for a more relaxed position.
The more relaxed I am, the more it signals that I am here and I’m present and I’m willing to listen.
We often lean into people when we’re listening. We don’t want to lean so close that they think we’re getting in their personal space, but we also don’t want to blow them off. And, you know, some of this is cultural, too, so you have to keep aware of that.
But in America, I do think that’s really common for the lean a little bit, and it might look just like that.
And our rule of thumb is to stay at least an arm’s length away. Appropriate eye contact. We struggle with that, and we struggle with teaching our kids appropriate eye contact.
It’s very important, and we want to do it right, particularly in the culture that we’re in. We don’t want to stare people down while they’re listening, but we also don’t want to not look at them. They may not give us eye contact depending on their emotional state.
Someone who’s feeling a lot of shame and embarrassment will probably not look at you, meet your gaze. Women tend to use eye contact more than men. So, you know, we got one thing going for us. And his rule of thumb was about 5 seconds of eye contact is good before you break it.
If, you know, if you’re like, I don’t know, am I swearing too much? Am I not looking enough? 5 seconds. Break eye contact and then, you know, look back, relax, try to be as relaxed as possible.
If you notice you’re getting tense or impatient, right, take a deep breath. You do need to have some strategies for exiting a conversation as well, because you don’t always have time for a conversation, but it’s a very hard habit to relax.
All right, touch. We were just talking about this at my house because I have people who don’t like to be hugged, and we have friends who really like to hug. How do you express that right to people? Like, stop hugging me. How? How? Hugs are important.
There’s a study that says we need four hugs a day to survive, eight hugs a day to be emotionally healthy, and twelve hugs a day to grow. Except for people who don’t like to be touched. I know, right? I am not a hugger. Maybe the length and have any of you seen the movie Rogue Saints, where these guys go dig underneath a church to find a diamond left by one of the parish ladies, who was.
Anyway, the one guy used to go to that church and he’s telling his buddy, who’s not a Christian, who is his partner, how to approach church. And he’s like, okay, first of all, you do the side hug, and if it’s male female, it’s only 2 seconds and then you’re out. Like all these rules about how to hug.
There was another study done where they watched couples sitting in restaurants and counted the number of times that they touched each other, you know, just by the hand or in some fashion, for an hour. They studied England. France.
Do I have that up here? No. England, France, the US, and Puerto Rico. Guess who had zero physical contact? England, France, Puerto Rico, or the US? England. Yep, England. The next worst was the US with two in the 60 minutes average. Then the French were at 110 and the Puerto Ricans at 180. They’re like sitting in each other’s laps practically. So they’re really healthy down there in Puerto Rico. Okay. But people don’t.
We have to be sensitive to hugs and how much contact, physical contact, particularly in our hyper-sexualized culture today, and the misconstruing of what that touch means.
So a really good place to start is a handshake. That is a physical touch, and it’s very, you know, you’re not showing any sort of sexual interest when you have. Hopefully, with the handshake, the next level would be like a pat on the back or on the upper arm. You know, nothing in between the waist and the shoulders inside there.
Look for nonverbal cues. Ask if it’s okay to hug somebody. Don’t assume everybody likes to be hugged or that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t like to be hugged. There’s nothing wrong with them.
But we do have a need for touch. Even babies do better when they’re held and touched; they’re healthier. I noticed this most when I went to college. I went away to Boston from Hawaii, and I was only going to go home once in a year. And I was in this.
Boston University is right on. Right on Commonwealth Avenue. So you’re just crossing the street, tons of people. And I was thinking how lonely I felt surrounded in a sea of people. And I think that’s common in a lot of cities where you’re alone, you feel so alone. And there was no physical touch. Right, because I didn’t know any of those people.
Okay, touch. Environmental awareness is talking about, like, your setup. If you have control over that, do you want to be behind a desk or not behind a desk?
Do you want a lot of stuff in between you and them, like clutter on your table or vases blocking it? People will tell you this room feels warm and inviting, or this room feels cold and sterile, and that has a lot to do with the physical environment.
And then the last thing is, accommodating attitude. Not everybody thinks the same way we do. What I think is funny might irritate somebody else and often does. And what he thinks is funny, I’m like, ugh. You know, even siblings can have experiences that are different. Their culture.
We assume as parents that they all grew up in the same culture, but they don’t. They have really different experiences, being male or female, birth order, family, culture. And people have different energy levels coming into a conversation, and they’re going to react differently to energy. Like, ooh, that person has big energy. They overwhelm me.
So you observe and try to decide if it’s appropriate to match the level of energy that that person that you’re trying to talk with and listen to has. And the Bible talks about it, as we could think about it this way.
Like, we mourn with those who mourn, and we laugh with those who laugh. And that’s an idea of that energy level being complementary to what we’re trying to achieve.
And remember, this is all a process. It’s a skill, and it’s not a checklist or a program that we can go down and check the boxes.
All right, that was the longest piece, so you guys were going to. You won’t be here forever.
Okay, so how do we measure our warmth? First of all, just remember, as the listener, you’re going to feel awkward as you develop awareness.
And again, we’re talking to the directs because probably all you empathetics already know this.
We’re going to be very self-conscious, but if we practice it and monitor our warmth feedback, we’ll get some success. And this is a temperature scale. Like, if you’re hugging or weeping with somebody, that’s a pretty hot, intimate temperature. If you’re moving closer and you have touch, that can be unpleasantly warm.
Where we want to be when we’re talking with somebody and that. Right, we’re talking about the tip of the iceberg here is attentive, interested, concerned, which expresses warmth.
If we just seem somewhat concerned or mechanical or clinical or distant, or we ignore people or literally just move away, walk away from them, we’re giving a cold response to their communication.
All right, so that’s the empathy, that’s the warmth part. How do we think about empathy? What is empathy versus sympathy? Sympathy is that idea of it’s a natural response that we have to suffering, whereas callousness, like we have, we can’t identify and we don’t have any interest in that person’s problem.
The trouble with sympathy is that we can often over-identify with the situation and end up getting into the situation with people rather than maintaining some awareness to come alongside and help.
So, empathy would be a better way for us to be a listener rather than sympathetic listening, because we want to communicate an accurate understanding. We want to show our care and compassion, and we want to help them move towards health, but we don’t want it to become our problem.
We don’t need to overwhelm ourselves with other people’s problems. So the important part about empathy is being willing to really understand what the speaker wants and needs from us. And what would be the most helpful way to respond to that answer?
What is the real question, question or request that they have? Often the problem isn’t understanding or responding with the right action because it becomes a problem, because we didn’t understand the problem in the first place.
And where we want to get to is this idea of reflective listening, where that involves understanding, involvement. This is the area of friendship, of emotional support.
Sometimes we see anger released here, or we might even see a mixed message that people are giving with their speaking. And our repose for this would be reflective listening.
If they’re just wanting information and we can determine that, then that’s a pretty easy one. We can give the information or refer them to someone who can give them information.
If they’re asking us for an action and we can think it’s an action that we are able to do, then we could answer yes and then do it.
Or if it’s something we cannot do or should not do, that would be more of an inappropriate action, then the answer would be no, and we don’t do it.
And particularly if it’s an inappropriate action, it’s good for us to remember to affirm the person, but decline the behavior and not reject the person because of the behavior as well.
So I liked his idea on reflective listening because he called it radar listening. And that’s not an acronym for anything. But he’s talking about this idea of like radar.
When you’re using your radar, you’re trying to pinpoint the actual location of a target. Or, I think, actually more modern 20 years later, GPS listening. Right. The GPS helps you determine not only the feeling that’s being expressed, but also the thought as well.
And that’s where we come in to help our empathetics who are just feeling it all, but they may not come around to what’s the thought. Because the feelings are so overwhelming. Say that again.
So we want to not only understand what the feeling is, but also the thought that goes with the feeling. And when we can understand, it’s like, right, the heart and the mind. And we’re looking for integration again. So we need to focus on both pieces.
Okay, so thoughts and feelings are coordinates. Think of those as coordinates that our radar is narrowing down on to get a lock on the spot in the person’s heart that they’re trying to direct us to. You often, if you’ve been involved in.
I don’t know, they use this a lot in companies. They certainly used it in the military. Or you’re trying. Was that where I learned it? I don’t know. you’re trying to understand the feelings. Actually, I learned it in CC. Confrontation, having to deal with confrontation. That’s where I learned it.
So that company trying to understand what people are actually saying. And we do that by saying, responding to them with feedback, like it sounds like you’re saying, or let me see if I’m getting this right.
I think you’re telling me whatever it is, right and there, and we’re pinpointing. Is it a feeling I’m hearing? Is it a thought? And can I summarize it and give them feedback that their message is coming across? I’m decoding.
So the kinds of feelings that you generally hear are there. Are these basic feelings of mad, sad, glad, afraid, confused, ashamed, or alone, lonely. And Gary Sweeten here says those are listed in order of intensity, that mad is actually the least intense. Sad, glad. Maybe I misunderstood him, but I think that’s what I was.
Surprised, afraid, confused, ashamed, and alone. It sounds like you feel mad because the dog ate the pizza, or I think you’re saying you feel glad because you won the lottery.
And that’s where we see both the thought and the feeling going together. Okay. When we can express to someone not only their thought and their feeling, that’s when they feel valued and understood.
Just keep in mind that if we have, if we’re expressing deep insight into their underlying issue, it can make them feel very vulnerable because we’re going underneath that top layer of the open part of the heart.
If we’re just touching on that underlying issue, they can feel just vulnerable. And we really want to be in this spot of interchangeable with thoughts and feelings expressed and not cause them to feel like they’re misunderstood, devalued, hurt, or rejected.
Some rules of thumb here, which is, it’s easy to do this, is to use a clip, a quip, or a pat answer or a cliche. We can overshare our own similar stories that we’ve experienced, we’ve had like that as well.
We don’t want to be grandma soup, you know, chicken soup or the interrogator, the general. We don’t want to default to those.
And I love this part, right from the Bible where he talks about pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
I don’t think we’ve really scratched the surface on the physical implication of those words, right? Integration between spiritual, emotional, and physical, but healing to the bones. If you’re a direct, it’s going to take a lot of practice.
Okay, so last bit, respect. Our third part of listening. Well, right? We had our warmth, our empathy, our empathy, and then respect. Respect communicates value or worth, what we desire, and we need to feel respected. We think in our society that respect is something that you deserve because you worked hard, you earned it.
Or maybe how you’re perceived by your outwardly display. We think differently of people when they’re dressed nicely versus when they’re not wearing makeup. Not wearing makeup. All kinds of reasons for people to either give respect or not.
So God doesn’t do it that way. He doesn’t show favoritism or respect based on our outward appearance or our work. Jesus’ culture changed the world with equality of man. No Jew, no Gentile, no male or female.
So, did you know that your eye, your pupil, actually will dilate based on how much you feel validated with what you’re saying, how much respect you think you’re getting from that person, and it’ll constrict when you tense up? I didn’t know that.
We’ll try not to stare more than 5 seconds at somebody, see what happens. But we really want to convey that position of respect because you are a child of God. You are worthy of respect because of imago dei, being the image of God, and to be thinking ourselves of.
I am, no matter what, I am lovable. I am capable. I deserve human respect out of just the worth of each human.
There are no ordinary people. Everybody is remarkable. So, this is the foundation for caring relationships. It makes marriages better. Our relationship with our children is better. Our inner self, coworkers, employees.
How do we respond? Can we receive respect or we don’t? This one is a little. Is it an anacrostic? Is that what it’s called when it does the resist pat answers or being manipulative?
Exercise personal responsibility, meaning don’t necessarily own other people’s problems. Try to suspend your judgments or your jumping to conclusions until you’ve heard the whole story.
Pray and practice. Extend yourself appropriately. Remember that balance we had with the teeter-totter. We’re not overextending, but we’re also not self-absorbed.
Consider the confidentiality of what’s being told, and then take the speaker’s comments seriously. And we’re going for this part right where we’re showing. It’s a position of strong humility. When we show respect for people, the higher values could be caring, love, and commitment.
But that is a greater cost to the listener who is committing to this speaker. Lesser would be your discounting. you’re judging, you’re condemning, or you’re attacking. Where you see some of these ideas of superiority, holier than thou, contempt, or open or hidden contempt.
So that humility is that position that’s between the two. Okay, so that’s the main thing that I’m talking about tonight. you’ve been patient. It went longer. Sorry.
Warmth with our body language and our nonverbals. Empathetic listening. Solar, right? Yeah, empathetic listening. And then respect. We can’t be everything to everyone.
We can’t get on our white horse and ride in and save the day and be John Wayne or Val Kilmer. But we can rest in what God has to say: He formed us, and sin deformed us. Christ has transformed us, and the Holy Spirit is continually reforming us.
So let’s try to listen, for heaven’s sake. Identify the problem, clarify whose responsibility it is. This was good advice. Delay the decision if you’re not sure yet who owns that problem, if you do have a commitment to it or not.
But if nothing else, affirm and empower the person and don’t fix the problems for everybody.
I liked his idea because oftentimes the church, not so much anymore, but maybe still, says science isn’t. There are no Christians in science, so therefore nothing that is in science or in psychology is even worth looking at. And we would put that under creation of the cosmos, of the things that we observe and see. So maybe there is some value to that.
The word is also a great place to get our information. And then the Holy Spirit.
So taking the cosmos, the logos, and I, the Rima altogether, to really try to understand what’s being said to us, the Spirit, and these are sweetin’s words and cosmos, they all have value as we try to understand and communicate and, of course, right still.
And listen to what God is saying to you about the situation and keep your balance. All right? Yeah. Thank you for listening. That’s my two cent. $0.20, maybe. Oh, thank. Thank you. Thank you.
So the fruit of God, for the people of God, right? He died for our sins, to take them away, because he took them for us. And he took that physical beating for our healing of our bodies in the here and now.
And of course, in the future, when we go to heaven, we’ll be completely healed. But even for the now, he says his will is for us to be whole and healed.
So please come and take communion. And then I think Steven has one more song for us and we’ll let you go home.
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