Last night after we took Victoria out to dinner for her Birthday, we took a walk through Pet Smart. As we walked past the birds, fish, reptiles and more, I got a million "look mom!" "hey mom," "mom...mom......mom...." Every five minutes someone was telling me something or asking me a question. After a while this can get very crazy. But last night, the Lord opened my eyes to the fact that sometimes in such situations I end up just giving quick "yey, yey" or "oh wow" kind of answers when I really should be listening better to my kids, and using these opportunities to make conversation with them. I realized as I really started to listen to them, that they really had a lot of cute things to say, and a lot of interesting observations about the animals. It made me wonder how often I probably have missed out on such things because I am not really listening.
Later after the kids were in bed I was typing an e-mail and Bob called. He was telling me a really long story about an obstacle course type game he had been involved in at school that day, and I realized about half way through his story that I had no idea really what he was even talking about! I was just trying to listen and type my e-mail at the same time and giving him an "uh huh" and "oh wow" every few seconds as if I were really listening. But the truth is, if I had been asked to re-tell the story I wouldn't have been able to! :-( Again, the Lord opened my eyes to the fact that I am not being "quick to listen"
Today I looked up the word "hear" in a concordance, and found that the word "hear" occurs 550 times in 516 verse! Too many for me to look up today, but look at what I did find when I looked up some greek definitions......
Here are a few of the definitions for the word hear....to hear: ~to attend to, consider what is or has been said ~ to understand, perceive the sense of what is said
I also looked up some Bible references to NOT hearing and found this.....neglect to hear: ~to hear aside a) causally or carelessly or amiss ~to be unwilling to hear a) to neglect, to pay no heed to b) to refuse to hear, pay no regard to, disobey
Ouch! The flip side of hearing is to neglect...to pay no heed....pay no regard....disobey.....yikes!!
Thank you Lord for showing me that I need to be a better listener, to both You and the people around me. Please continue to prompt me to listen, and point out to me times when I am not being a good listener.
1 comment:
What is God doing to us?? It's neat how He gave us the same thought to work on- Michelle commented that she would pray for this as well. I love how we all learn from eachother. I think I will have to write on that. Hope you are listening well!
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