#63 – The Big Game of Listening

Welcome to season seven of Presently Engaged with Mandy Pallock. Here you’ll find short, friendly, Jesus-focused encouragement to live intentionally right where you are. In this episode we will have a devotional thought source from life and then we’ll end the podcast with a scripture reading. I’ll be reading from an English standard version of a passage.

This will give us the opportunity to center our minds on Jesus and our hearts on his word because lives will change as we engage with God’s word. Would you be willing to share this podcast with a friend or with someone you’re mentoring? Listen in and then join me at PresentlyEngaged.com. I’m so grateful for your time and glad that you are here because you friend are making a difference.

At the risk of alienating most people listening, I am not a football fan. When I most pretend to follow sports, I’m a basketball fan and I cheer for the Dallas Mavericks in a city full of rabid San Antonio spurs aficionados. I wear my MAVs gear with pride. Every other year though my web search history indicates that I’m trying to increase my tenuous understanding of how the game of football is played.

First down, tight end, nose tackle, please tell me I’m not the only one who has a tough time grasping all of this. You see every February a certain big game inspires parties across the nation. Invariably a friend invites my husband and me to a party with the assumption that as red-blooded Americans we wouldn’t be anywhere else. So a few days before the game I Google which teams will play and try to refresh my basic understanding of football rules.

This routine happens about every other year because it takes me two years to recover from the last one. My right hand grasps a steaming paper cup of coffee, my favorite beverage. In a room full of people I don’t know gathered to celebrate a game I don’t follow, a familiar feeling washes over me. Why did I come in the first place?

All the cool people are eating chips and dip. Am I supposed to eat chips and dip? Five people wearing Team Jersey stood up and cheered ecstatically. What just happened?

Am I supposed to stand up and cheer too? I gear myself up for an evening of awkward small talk where everyone is gathered to watch an event about which I know very little. The entire house of people came to watch a game. Introductions happen, small talk results we chat and share and laugh and cheer but everyone keeps half a brain and at least one eye on the television.

Me, wherever I am I’m all there. I’m a fan for a day jumping in to cheer with both feet and temporary gusto for the underdog or at least my best guess of who the underdog might be. Plus most of the commercials are worth watching. You know what it feels like to talk to someone and know that he is not listening?

It’s as if a big game is going on in the next room and he is trying to catch the score. We can talk all we want about creating a safe space for conversation. The first step however is actually listening. Listening is not simply letting sound waves enter your ears.

It is active, allows the words to sink in, generates understanding and inspires a response. In a busy crowd you can easily look over someone’s shoulder, glance away and get distracted. The same holds true in a busy home or a busy workplace. If I’m honest with myself I struggle with this so much.

My mind wanders, my gaze wanders and eventually our conversation wanders too and then I wander away to the next thing. Think back to a time that you felt fully listened to when someone paid complete attention to you and only you. Her eyes locked to yours, fully interested in not only what you had to say but why you said it. I imagine that you felt loved and seen and known.

Three desires of the human hearts. You have the power to share these gifts with those that you love every day. What if? What if you made others feel this way?

How would your relationships look if your questions weren’t arrows piercing the conversation but a give and take where both parties encouraged and understood? Listening may be one of the most real expressions of grace that you give another person. Someone expresses an interest in you when he or she says, tell me more about that and intently listens to the answer. The power of a question is transformative.

Listening is wanting to know more about another person and his or her perspective, whether that person is a spouse, a child, a friend, or someone with whom you happen to agree or disagree. You aren’t asking questions to create an excuse to hear yourself talk, not querying so that you can convince someone your answer is the correct answer. But rather when you listen to hear, to understand, to know another person’s heart, that is what builds a relationship and a relationship is the thing on which all conversations, the easy, the casual, the hard, the life-changing, those things are built. Once a year in February, we all get a pass on active listening but for the rest of the time lean in, listen, engage.

This season we are reading what I call the Apostle Paul’s power prayers. Join me in reading 2 Corinthians 1-2-5 and 1 Corinthians 3-9-13 and 2 Thessalonians 2-3-17. This is the word of the Lord. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s suffering so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

Amen. The Freedom Journey is coaching for Christians. It’s hosted by a group of Jesus-loving faithful to the Bible men and women who have found freedom in their own lives and are working to share that freedom with others with an actionable results-oriented focus. Why do I mention it?

Hannah Abed, the lead coach, is a dear friend of mine and last year she asked me to join their board of advisors for the outreach. Now since then I’ve been in meetings and had conversations and been lurking on the coaching platform, listening in on the life-changing conversations and hearing heart-revealing questions. It’s too good not to share, friends. Having read through and listened through and smiled through and prayed through the content, I see that the Freedom Journey does indeed share real practical steps for true freedom.

And what is true freedom, you ask? Well, if you’re feeling like a fraud or you can’t move past deep pain or you’re wanting to understand more fully your position in Christ and the life-changing difference your faith makes and Jesus makes in and through you every day, if you’re wanting to narrow in on who you are, what you’re doing and why it matters, then those would be areas in which you can experience freedom in Christ. And if you’re looking for that for yourself or for someone you love within the coaching context, check out TheFreedomJourney.co. They’re currently accepting applications all summer through September 9th.

Cohort 4 runs from September 19th through December 12th with breaks for holidays. So check it out on TheFreedomJourney.co. Here’s to freedom, friend.