Listening in Love
The Saviour by El Greco,
1604-1614, El Greco Museum at Toledo, Spain
Ephesians 4: 29-32
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Part of what I envision as my job is to encourage each person in Christ. I want to encourage you that following Jesus, and the living the way He tells us to live is the best thing you could possibly do to make your life complete. Living a life of faith will provide a peace, an orderliness, and contentment that surpasses any other way of life.
The truths of God are foundational truths. When we read the words of God and we immerse ourselves in the stories about Jesus; how He came to show us what God is really like, it paints a picture in broad strokes across the canvas of our life. This is not to say that Jesus didn’t get into specifics when He was asked questions by His followers. I keep coming back to the larger picture with Jesus though. The teachers of the law who were trying to trip Jesus up in conversation would ask Him specific things and He would answer, but He would always bring the conversation back around to the greater truth. A woman was married multiple times and Jesus could tell you whose wife she was going to be in heaven, but more important than the specific human questions, Jesus kept saying "The kingdom of God is like…" or "Only the Father knows the answer to that one, but He loves you and He wants you to act this way" or "The most important thing is to love God and love your neighbor." But Lord I’ve kept all the commandments all my life, I’m a rich man now. What do I do with all my stuff? Jesus said "Get rid of all that and just follow me." God lays the groundwork for our lives in His large brush strokes. He says "Here’s the way you do it. Everything else will take care of itself if you just do these things." And still, we say "But what about this, what about this?" It’s just the way humans are, God knows us and He continually keeps trying to direct our attention to the greater issues at hand.
So God came to earth in human form, left us with these truths and did the amazing things He did for us, gave us the foundation for everything we would ever need, left us with all this information, went back to heaven (remember He said "I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll still be here with you, forever, until the end of the age") and left his disciples in charge-that’s you and me. Immediately we started picking at each other in the details. In the story of the early church, Paul spends a lot of his time putting out fires in the new churches. God’s children are given the larger message and immediately we start trying to pick apart the details, to see if there is any room to get away with stuff. Paul writes letters to the churches in Corinth, Ephesus, and Galatia, addressing details like drunkenness, slander, stealing, talking trash, lying, and following false teaching. The foundational work set down by God is solid and true, but humanity just messes up the details. So fundamentally, I think we’re good. I know that God loves you just the way you are. I know he loves me just the way I am. Every now and then I hear Him saying to me "I love you all the time. Sometimes I don’t like you so much." "What are you doing? Why did you do that? Didn’t you hear me tell you not to do that?" My foundation in God is strong and true. He has given me the information in a larger sense and He has laid a solid foundation in me. But I mess up in the details.
"Love God with all you heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself" covers a lot of ground. If I spent all my time doing that I wouldn’t have the time left to mess up in other ways. Not only should I use my mouth to "build up," but I must use my heart to listen in love. That is action that happens as a result of following God’s broad brush strokes. I know that how is listen is just as important as what I say, and it comes from doing what God tells me to do. When I listen in love, I react with love. And when I react in love, I don’t let the talk come out of my mouth that started my problem in the first place. It’s tempting to apply this passage to the behavior of others but I think it is speaking to me. When I "get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice," I am "kind and compassionate, forgiving as Christ forgives me." I can even read it through backwards and connect the dots: I am "kind and compassionate to (others), forgiving (them), just as in Christ God forgave (me), and I do not let any unwholesome talk come out of my mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. I am talking about myself. It will benefit me when I listen.
Several times this week, I took something someone said and applied my own take to it. I listened in slander and malice, and presupposed all sorts of things that weren’t true, because I didn’t listen in love. Loving my neighbor as myself doesn’t just involve me actively loving and doing things for people all the time. Sometimes I just need to listen with the ears of God, listen as God listens, to hear what God hears. I can take anything anyone says and make it mean anything, if I listen in a way that makes it bad. If I truly love my neighbor, I will listen in love, and that changes the way everything sounds! Even if someone means bad things for you, if you listen to it in love, the intent of the words becomes God’s intent and it cannot hurt you! God’s foundation of the truth in the larger sense covers everything in our lives. If we do the big things, the little things will take care of themselves. I failed this week and it made words come out of my mouth that I wish had not. I heard things a certain way, which caused me to react a certain way, which caused me to say certain things, which I then realized were not for the good of those people, for building them up in Christ. I did not listen in love, therefore, I didn’t hear in love, therefore I did not react in love, and I did not act in love. If I had just followed the foundational principles of God, the details would have worked out. But I am human, which brings me back to the rest of my job here.
Not only am I to encourage you, but I am to confess when I do not do what I know I should do, I am also to share my failings with you, so that Christ can be glorified in the healing. I will encourage you in every way. I will also tell you how I messed up and what steps I took to fix it, through the foundational truths of God, and how I am trying to live a life of love, so that I can tell you how it’s going-and in turn you tell me how it’s going for you-and we bear each other up, we walk together, we share, we talk together, we praise God together and we forgive each other and receive God’s forgiveness. I found that when I did not listen in love, it caused all sorts of disorganized thoughts and reactions, and what I had to do was return to God in peace and tranquility, in humility and openness, and calm down and let God organize my thoughts with His thoughts, His peace, and His love. I should rely on His strength, not my own, because I will fail every time when I try to do it alone, or when I slip up and try to stand on my own. The foundation has been laid for me. Why would I even try to stand anywhere else?
The lesson for me today is to allow God to be my foundation, to get the big picture, so that when the details come up (and they will), I will have rock solid truth to rest upon, to rely on, to guide me and provide organization, quiet and peace. I am human. I sin. I ask forgiveness and I am forgiven. I just wanted you to know that it works. Amen. I offer this prayer from Ephesians for you right now:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.