[Rick Shabi] A few weeks ago, I gave a sermon on relationships and the main thrust of that sermon was, seek first to understand. If you’ll remember, I mentioned a few books that I had read over the course of my life that had changed the way that I related to people and that had made a significant difference. Of course, the number one book that all of us have come to know and that we read, that makes a significant change in our life, is the Bible. But there are other things and circumstances that we encounter along the way that change the way we think and change the way we act as well. Some of them are very necessary. And I think when we read these things, we recognize problems in ourselves that we need to address.

Do you remember the books I mentioned? I mentioned a book, The Man Nobody Knows. It was written back in 1925 by a man named Bruce Bartin, who wasn’t a minister or a theologian of any sort. I remember Mr. Armstrong talking about that book a lot. And it just gave me an insight into to what Jesus Christ was like as a man. We read the Bible and we all study Him. In fact, in says in Luke 6, a disciple studies not only his master’s words, but he studies the master – how he behaves. We are all here to learn how to become like Jesus Christ. One of the things He did in His life was, He related very well to people and set us examples in the Bible of how we can do that as well. Another book was a marriage book by Gary Smalley. I was referring to the male – the husband’s version of that – If Only He Knew. That had some eye-opening things in it for me to help me understand my wife better – something that every husband could learn from. We  sometimes have to take the time and make time and ask God to help us to understand things from another person’s perspective. I also talked about Stephen Covey and his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s where seek first to understand comes from. All too often we are too ready to just talk to people, rather than listening and trying to figure out where they come from. If we are really going to be affective in our relationships with each other, our relationships at home, our relationships at church, we need to really understand where we all are. Because we’re all unique. We all have different backgrounds. Just because I may see things in one way, doesn’t mean you see it in exactly the same way. Now, we are all in one accord and all follow the Bible exclusively. We don’t compromise on that. But our backgrounds and some of the things we come from, we need to understand that. And, of course, Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was looking something up this week – one of the quotes from him for this sermon – and I noticed the billionaire investor, Warren Buffet, sited that book as one of the things that changed his life around – that when he read that book, he learned how to engage people. And it certainly catapulted him into a whole different realm from who he was before, into the successful man he is today. He credited that book with helping him to be able to relate to people and to understand where they are coming from. In many of his business engagements, he said that was one of the things that really made the difference in his life.

But I want to start today in the verse that we read last time. Let’s go over to Hebrews 4, and I want to progress past seek first to understand to, how do we? What are some of the techniques we can use to seek first to understand? In Hebrews 4, verse 14, we see that Jesus Christ and we know that God the Father know us very well. They understand us. That’s because they pay attention to us. They watch our actions. They watch our reactions. As we have God’s Holy Spirit and as we use that Holy Spirit they see how we progress – if we are progressing – and how we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ Himself, since He was on earth, understands all our weaknesses, understands all the temptations, all the things we go through, because He has experienced them. Hebrews 4, verse 14:

Hebrews 4:14 – Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we don’t have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. He did it. With His Holy Spirit and with our commitment to Him, over time, we can do it. We can overcome sin. We can overcome our own faults. We can overcome our relationship problems. There isn’t a relationship problem that can’t be solved when we have God’s Holy Spirit, and the other person is working with us, and we use the principles of the Bible to do that. We have to do that. God has given us…He’s placed us in a church and in His body, and our lives are full of relationships. The Bible is full of relationships. Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, dealt with people of all kinds – people who hated Him, people who followed Him, people who didn’t know Him but then they got to know Him. He did it all. And we can do it as well. We simply have to learn, and we simply have to apply, and simply have to come to understand how to do those things and be committed to it.

So, one of the things that Stephen Covey said – and I am going to quote from a couple of the books that I mentioned here earlier – but Stephen Covey said this. He said, “Next to physical survival the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, and to be appreciated.” Dale Carnegie said pretty much the same thing. He said, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Isn’t that true? Is there anyone in here that would say, “I could care less whether I’m appreciated or not? I don’t care if I anyone cares if I am important. I don’t care if anyone really cares whether I am here or not.” Every single one of us have that need.  God knows we have that need. And every single one of us is appreciated by God. To Him, every single one of us and every single human being is important to Him. He says, “He’s not willing that any should die. But that all should come to repentance and that all should receive eternal life” – everyone. And He isn’t a respecter of persons. Jesus Christ showed that when He was on earth. The apostles showed that when they were on earth. We need to show that while we are on earth. Every person is important to God. There is no partiality with God. There should be no partiality with us. Every single person – every single person – here and, really, every single person in our lives needs to know that we validate them, that we appreciate them, and that they’re important.

So many relationships – so many relationships – and I’ll start at the top one, okay? – the top one physically – in marriage – fall apart, because one party begins to feel unappreciated by the other one. And that feeling of unappreciation just continues to mushroom and mushroom and mushroom, until bitterness falls in and they separate.

How many people leave God because they fail to appreciate Him? We forget the things that He does for us. The things in our life we have because of Him. When we fail to appreciate God, we can fall away and lose the most valuable thing that we have. Back in Philippians 2, the Bible says the same thing that Stephen Covey and Dale Carnegie and so many others have said. In Philippians 2, it says – Philippians 2, and verse 3:

Philippians 2:3 – Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each esteem others better than himself.

Now, if we had that attitude among us all the time – you know, “I’m just thankful that you are in my life. I am grateful to know you. I am grateful to have your company” – if we had that attitude about everyone, if everyone that is sitting in this room had that toward each other, our relationships would be pretty good. We would develop relationships with everyone. We would want to develop a relationship with everyone. As God’s Spirit leads us in this body here, and the other bodies that we may be part of – other congregations that we visit from time to time – we would feel that relationship, and we would feel that bonding, and we would feel that love, if you will, that comes when we look at each other and we realize we are all part of the same family here – just as husband and wife are. You know, through all the relationships in the Bible, and it talks about all of them. It talks about our relationship to God, husband and wife relationships, parent to child relationships, brother to brother relationships, family relationships and church relationships. What is God’s one will in all of those? What is the common thing that He says He wants? Well, He says to marriage partners, “You become one. You become one flesh.” To the people in the church, He says, “My will is that you become one, just as the Father and I” – Jesus Christ said – “are One. I want you to be one.” In your families, you need to be one. You need to develop those things. That’s what relationships, when they’re happy…they take work and they take time, but it is worth it. The happiness and the joy that comes from a beautiful relationship, that is done the way God wants us to. And using the principles we see in the Bible is far more important than anything else we can do in our life, or anything else we can accomplish.

You know, you’ve probably heard people who have been dying say, and the rich men on earth have sited this: At the end of your life, when you look back over your life, you are not going to say, “Man, I’ve had a rich full life and I am so glad I made a billion dollars. I am so glad I am dying with a billion dollars in my bank account. And I’m so glad I had this pretty house to live in. And I’m so glad I had this pretty sporty car. What you are going to look back on to give you satisfaction and meaning in life is the relationships that we have – relationships with each other, relationships with husband and wife, parent and child, our relationship with God – all important and all things that we need to be looking at.

The Bible says,  “Esteem each person higher than yourself.” Have that outlook. Jesus Christ was born flesh and He was God. He esteemed us so important that He gave up, if I can use that term, gave up being God to come and die for us. That’s how important you and I, and every other living human being, is to Him. The statement can’t be any louder than that. We are important and the example He sets for us, He expects us to establish for each other.

Let’s go back and look at a couple of things that Jesus Christ did in His life. Let’s go back to Luke 19 and see an example where He picked a person out of a crowd, that the rest of the world would say, “You’re not important. We don’t appreciate you. We really, really don’t want anything to do with you. We would just as soon you weren’t here. You can be here, but we really don’t want you to be here.” In Luke 19, we find the story of a man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. And back in Christ day, to be a tax collector was an awful situation to be in. It wasn’t something they chose to do, but people didn’t like them, because of their reputation. Zacchaeus is a victim of that reputation. Let’s pick it up here in verse 1, and read the first ten verses – Luke 19, and verse 1.

Luke 19:1-10 – Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus – incidentally, Zacchaeus, when you look it up, means clean and pure. Isn’t that interesting for a tax collector? Behold there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So, he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” Well, here is a man that no one of the Jews wanted anything to do with. He’s a tax collector. He’s a sinner in their eyes. The people of that day had done one of the things that we talked about last time. They had pre-judged Zacchaeus. Remember Matthew 7:1-2? Judge not that you be not judged? They had pre-judged him. He was a tax collector. They pre-determined, “We don’t need him in our lives. We don’t need to associate with him. We don’t have to have any kind of fellowship with him.” So, he’s up there in this tree. He wants to see Jesus Christ walking by. He’s in a tree all by himself and Jesus Christ comes by and sees this man that everyone else was shunning. They would just as soon he wasn’t there. He was kind of a non-entity to them. Jesus picked him out, and He said, “Zacchaeus, I am coming to your house today.” Now to Zacchaeus, that had to be a monumental, life-changing moment in his life – a man who is used to just being shoved aside and walked by, and people wouldn’t even look at him and smile as they walked by. Here he was…this Man, that the crowds were here to see, picked him out. Let’s see what affect that had on him. So he made haste and came down – Zacchaeus did – verse 6 – and received Christ joyfully. But when the people saw it, they complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.” They pre-judged the man. They never really took the time to get to know him. There was never a relationship between them and Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything else from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold. I’m doing this the right way. I’m trying to doing things the way I am supposed to. I’m not trying to steal from people. I’m not trying to just get rich off of their hard-earned money. I’m not just giving them a bill for nothing. I’m doing it the right way.” But no one knew that. No one took the time to get to know him. No one took the time to see what he was about. No one came to see that he was this type of man. And Jesus said to him – in verse 9 – “Today salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. I’ve come down.” Today salvation had come to him. He had a new lease on life. Now he had a part in salvation. He had a relationship with the Messiah. He had that because Christ said, “You are important. I don’t care what the rest of society says. You are important. I don’t care what your family and friends say. You are important. I don’t care what the people think of you. I want to get to know you for Myself. I am not going to pre-judge you. I am not going to make my assumptions on you. I will get to know you. Today” He said, “salvation has come to this house.” It made a big difference.

Let’s go forward to the book of  John – John 4 – another occasion here, where Christ engages someone that the rest of the world, or Jewish nation of that day, would just say, “I don’t want anything to do with her.She is just kind of persona non grata. She’s not a Jew, therefore she’s not even worthy of having me say, ‘Hi,’ to her.” But Jesus Christ was a different type of person. He wanted a relationship and showed there is no unimportant person. There is no partiality with God. Chapter 4 of John – let’s pick it up in verse 6.

John 4:6-14 – Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink,” for His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?” Isn’t that an awful situation to be in? “Your people don’t talk to us. You don’t want anything to do with us. Christ said, “No, you are important to me.” Christ answered and said to her. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” He began to open her mind to some truth here to a person that the rest of the world would have said, “Don’t even waste your time.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Christ answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. He talked to her. He asked her for something. He began to show her what He was about and what the truth was about, and what her potential was and the potential for mankind is. If He had never talked to her, if He had treated her the way everyone else, at that time in the nation of Judea, was treating Samaritans, she would have gone through her life and not known anything. There wouldn’t have been the hope. There wouldn’t have been the joy that, I think, this woman felt that day. He went on to talk to her more – and we don’t have the whole thing recorded here – but He knew some things about her. Down in verse 21, He told her some of what God’s plan is:

V-21-24 – Woman, believe Me the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you don’t know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. And then she says, ”I know there is a Messiah coming,” and He tells her it’s Him.

Look how much happened in that conversation. Look how her life changed because Christ took the time to engage her and talk to her. He didn’t look down and say, “I don’t even have any dealings with that person. They’re of a different nationality. They have a different background” – or whatever it might be. He took the time.

I could give you several more examples. We could go to John 8 and look at the woman who was caught in adultery – red-handed, right? Christ said, “You know what, you’re important. You’re important. The rest of the world and all the people gathered there that day said, “She deserves death. Stone her.” And, by law, she did. But Christ said, “You’re important. Today I am going to teach forgiveness.” To that woman, who the world looked down on – and all of her accusers looked down on her that day – she was important, and He gave her time. Some might have said, “What are you even engaging with a woman caught in adultery for? Why are you even wasting your time on her?” But He did. And He would tell you and me, “There is no one unimportant. Every single person is important. Every single person needs to be validated and affirmed – every single person, regardless of whether they are man, woman, child, teenager, rich, poor, whatever race, whatever background – whatever. They’re all important.” When God draws them, then He expects that we will be treating them as importantly as He sees them and esteeming everyone highly – as it says in Philippians 2, verse 3, “Higher than ourselves,” because they’re that important to God. And those people – and all of you – are that important to us and to each other. That’s how God would have us do. And it works in all of our relationships.

You know, I am going to draw some family things into this, as well, because every relationship has the same principles in order to be effective. I mentioned the Gary Smalley book, If Only He Knew.” And in that book, he talks about one of the main things that breaks up a relationship – a marriage relationship…. And I am going to bring it from the husband’s standpoint. I didn’t bring the wives’ version of the book. Men probably feel this way, too, sometimes. It’s when a wife feels she has been taken for granted. Probably every wife in here…I would imagine every wife in here would probably say, from time to time, they feel like their husbands just take them for granted – that there are things in their life – in their husband’s life – that are just more important. Gary Smalley actually recounts a section in there where he said that was what his marriage problem was early on. He was active in counseling and whatever. And whenever anyone would call, he would just leave. He didn’t really care what his wife had planned. If she had something planned that night, they were just supposed to pass it on or reschedule it. If she had something she wanted to do, it didn’t matter, clients came first, friends came first, golf came first – whatever it was comes first. That caused a problem to the point where she wouldn’t even talk to him anymore. She wanted nothing to do with him. He could feel that – “You know what? Something is really wrong.” He didn’t know. He was just living his life, thinking he was doing great things with the service business he was in – helping people. She would kind of give him the hints about what it was, but he didn’t want to hear it. He said, but one day, he sat down and talked to her, because of some of the comments she was making, and he began to see and understand exactly how he made her feel. Everything that came up was more important than her. He said, I learned a valuable lesson that day that I was able to pass on, then, to other people.”

If your wife isn’t the most important person in your life – if she stops feeling that way – then there’s a problem. There’s a problem. It can be fixed. In marriage, when God said, “Husband and wife, one marriage for the rest of your life, commit and cleave to one another,” outside of God, that is the most important relationship in your life. If it has drifted apart and if there are problems, you might go back and think, “Does my husband feel like he is the most important person in my life?” Husbands, “Does my wife feel she is the most important person in my life? Do I do the little things that make her feel that way? Do  I give her any of that at all? Because, you know what, if we’re not, then we’re to blame. It’s not circumstances. It’s not other things. It can be that. God has shown that everyone is important and in that relationship, husband or wife need to be number one. Now, there are other things that can break up a relationship, as well, but that may be one of the things that’s one of the things that leads to a lot of problems. 

Children too, need to feel important. They need to feel like they’re important to you – not just someone you can order around and say, “Do this and do that.” And you don’t understand when they don’t do the things you want. They have thoughts and they have feelings, too, and we need to understand them and spend the time to let them know they are important, and pass on to them the things in life that are important.

Let’s go back to Leviticus 19. I want to show you a principle from the Old Testament here. You know in the New Testament, it talks about no partiality – Acts 10, verse 34. Peter comes to that realization when he is being sent to the Gentiles to speak. He says that in in verse 34 – I think it is verse 34 – he says, “In truth I perceive there is no partiality with God.” Everyone is important to Him, therefore everyone should be important to us. Back in Leviticus 19, even in the Old Testament…. They talk about, “You can’t understand the New Testament, if you don’t understand the Old Testament.” The same principles in the Old Testament are there in the New Testament and visa versa. There is a continuity in the Bible that you can’t deny when you go back and look at it. In Leviticus 19, God is talking to His children – the children of Israel – that He brought out of Egypt. They were the nation that He had hoped would be an example to the world – that they were going to live by God’s way, that they were going to be the nation that other nations would see that example and follow. But of course, they didn’t do that. But here in Leviticus 19, and verse 33, there is a principle that God gives them. Now, Israel could have felt very much like, “We’re our own little family here. We’re the Israelites. We’re special. God brought us out of Egypt. He’s watching us as we wander through the desert. In verse 33, it says this:

Leviticus 19:33 – If a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. Better treat him well. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself. It’s a pretty tall order isn’t it? “You shall love him as yourself. I don’t want you looking down on these strangers that are living among you. I don’t want you mistreating him or saying he is a second class or third-class citizen. I don’t want you treating him like he’s a Samaritans or someone else. I want you to look at him – if he’s among you – as someone as yourself.” You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. The Israelites were badly mistreated in Egypt. They were looked down on as second, and even lower-class, citizens than that. They should have known. God is saying, “You don’t do the same thing to others that was done to you. You do things the way God does. You do things the way God does. There is no partiality with Him.”

Let me just ask the question: How would you feel – how would you feel – if you thought or felt that you weren’t important to God? If we ever felt that…and we can feel that sometimes, right, if we’ve drifted from what we should be doing. If we’ve gone away from God, we might blame Him, and say, “I am just not important anymore.” But we’re all important. Christ said, “I’ll never leave you and I’ll never forsake you.” We don’t want to think of a God that wouldn’t see us as important. In fact, He sees us as very important – a very important parts of His plan – so much so, as I said before, that Jesus Christ was willing to come and die – die – so that we could have a part in that plan. That’s how important He sees you and me. And none of us deserves that. None of us deserves it, but He did it. If He’s willing to do that, how should we treat each other?

What are the relationships that we could develop? What other relationships could we open up as we get to know each other better and bond together more as a family, as Jesus Christ called us to be part of a family here in Orlando? What if those things happened? What if we treated our children as important? What if we treated husband and wife as important, as they should be, and consciously trained ourselves to do that? As Gary Smalley will say, “It wasn’t easy.” He had to catch himself at times. When his wife had something to do, and someone called him and said, “I need you there,” he wanted to go, but he had to train himself – “Nope, I can’t do it now. It has to be later.” I think we can all work in those regards in our marriages, but in everything we do in church as well.

How do we make each other feel important? What are the things that we can do? How do we do some of those things? Be turning over to Luke 2. We’ll look at what Jesus Christ – what He did even as a young man. As you are turning to Luke 2, let me give you a quote from Dale Carnegie in his book. He said, “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Become genuinely interested in other people. That means get to know them – more than just their name, more than just what they do for a living. Get to know them. Be interested in them. Don’t you find when someone is interested in you that you kind of feel close to that person? When you take the time to show you are interested in someone else, you know kind of know they feel the same thing. “They’re interested in us. They’re important to us.” We all need that. God looks at us. God understands us. God is genuinely interested in us. Let’s go to Luke 2, verse 46. This is Christ, when He was a young man – actually, He wasn’t even a teenager - 12 years old. This is the occasion where His parents were in Jerusalem for the Passover. They went home. Three days later, they realized Jesus wasn’t with them. They went back to look for Him. They find Him with the religious leaders of that day. Luke 2, and verse 46:

Luke 2:46 – So it was after three days journey, they found him – Christ’s parents found Him – in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. Listening to them and asking them questions. Now I think at 12 years old, Jesus Christ probably had already sized up and, through His experience and watching what was going on and understanding what was happening there in Judea, knew where the teachers of that day had been wrong. He knew, and would later say point blank to them, “You have put as commandments the doctrines of men. You have forgotten the commandments of God and replaced them with your own traditions.” But here He is, as a young man. He might have, in His youthful exuberance, gone in there and told them everything they needed to know about the Bible and everything they were doing wrong. He could have laid them low, probably, and said, “You know what, you are doing this wrong and this wrong. The Bible says do this and the Bible says do that. You’re not doing any of it,” etcetera. He didn’t do that. He esteemed those men better than Him, and He was listening to them, and He was asking questions of them.

When we are showing interest in other people, we need to listen to them. One of the ways we can get to know them is, we can ask questions, right? If we are going to seek first to understand, we can’t understand everyone unless we ask some questions – unless we get to know them. I don’t mean probing questions that are going to embarrass them, or anything like that, but just things that we would need to know to understand their backgrounds – understand where they are coming from. If it’s in a situation where there is counseling, to see, what is it? Because every one of us comes from a different background. And just because one person has the same problem, on paper, that another person does, it can stem from two totally different things in their life. One of the reasons that we do – in marriage counseling – is we spend time talking about the background, so that we get to understand – that people that are engaged get to know each other – so they can understand. So when they get into the relationship, or into the marriage, and they have a problem, “I understand why she sees things that way” “I understand why he does that.” There is a time and a place then that you can bridge that gap. But He was listening and asking questions.

You know, God listens to us. You know, Jesus Christ – as we read through the Bible and you read through His encounters with people, and read through the gospels – He listened a lot to people. He was there, and He was paying attention to what was going on. God listens to us a lot. He listens to your and my prayers every single day. Can you imagine? If you were God…just look at the people in this room. They pray every day. “They talk to Me.” And He listens to every word. He learns a lot about us in our prayers, doesn’t He, as we talk to Him. He learns what is important to us. He learns the things that we want to focus on. He learns from the things that we ask for what is most important to us. He learns how concerned we are with others by the number of times we mention others in our prayers versus our own needs. He understands how important the Kingdom is to us by the amount of time we spend praying about “Thy Kingdom come.” He learns a lot from listening to us. If we’re astute and if we’re praying, and God’s Spirit is leading and guiding us, we can listen to Him through our prayers as well. I know you have all had the occasion when you are praying about something, and all the sudden an answer comes into your mind, or a direction comes into your mind. Something happens. If our prayers are just non-stop, if they’re just vain repetitions, if they’re just the things that we run through – a list we go through every day – “I am going to pray about this, this, this, this, and we just kind of have to catch our breath to get it all in, and they we say, “Oops, I’ve got my time in and I’m done with my prayer,” there is no time to listen to God. If He’s going to listen to us, we kind of need some time to listen to Him, too. That listening can come from the Bible, because you can pray about something and within the next day or two, look in the Bible and find your answer. Often times, it is what we’re doing wrong, not what someone else is doing wrong – but something that we need to change in our lives. God spends an awful lot of time listening to us. If we could add up all of our prayers – all that time – we would know how much He listens. You don’t think He knows you pretty well? You don’t think He knows me pretty well? I think He knows us pretty well – pretty well. As we encounter problems in our lives, or trials in our lives, things in our life that may not make us happy, we may want to listen. We may want to listen, because what God is interested in is that we are going to be in His Kingdom. He may be giving us, if we listen, some of the things that we need to work on, and go back and keep up on, to make sure we are doing the things that it says in the Bible.

So, God does listen to us. And as we listen – and as I talk about listening – I don’t want everyone after church to just stand there and look at each other and listen, okay? It’s just part of normal conversation. You know what I’m doing here and there are times when you listen - and I will talk about it, in a minute – there are times when we listen with more than the words that are spoken. Let me read to you from Mr. Covey’s book here about listening, because I think he has some insights here that I had to refresh my mind on as I was putting this together. Page 239 of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – he talks about listening. Let me just read a few paragraphs from this. He says: “Seek first to understand” – that’s what we were talking about last time and today as well – “involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.” Isn’t that true? As I read that I thought about some of my conversations with you. And I thought, “You know what? I was formulating my reply while they were talking.” And that’s something we all do. “They are either speaking or preparing to speak. They are either filtering everything from their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.” When he says autobiography, he means using your own experiences to project those onto the other person, and thinking what they have gone through is exactly what you have gone through. Every single person is different and every single experience is different. We need to listen. He says: “They are constantly projecting their own home movies onto other people’s behavior. They prescribe their own eyeglasses for everyone with whom they interact. If they have a problem with someone – a son, a daughter, a spouse, an employee – their attitude is, ‘That person just doesn’t understand.’” That’s so often the case. We just think, “They just aren’t paying attention,” but it is really us who hasn’t understood.  That is the case, he says, with so many of us. “We are filled with our own rightness – our own autobiography. We want to be understood. Our conversations become collective monologues and we never really understand what is going on inside another human being. When another person speaks, we are usually listening at one of four levels. We may be ignoring the other person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending that we are listening.” And we might say things like, “Uh huh, right,” and give the inference we are paying attention. “We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we are listening to the constant chatter of a pre-school child. Or we may even practice attentive listening – paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said.” You’ve probably all been through that. I can remember times when Debbie was talking to me, and she will say, “What is the last thing I said?” And my face turns all red, I hope, and I think, “I don’t know.” And it is embarrassing. So anyway, that’s what he’s saying. Sometimes, when that happens a few times, we listen closely, so we can repeat the words back. But he’s saying, “That’s just another type of listening that isn’t the type of listening that we should strive for.” “We may even practice attentive listening – paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said, but very few of us ever practice the fifth level – the highest form of listening – and that is empathic listening.” Now you remember last time, we talked about empathy, and that Jesus Christ…when it says in Hebrew 4: 14 through 16, He had sympathy for us, it was really empathy. He’s touched by us. He wants to help us. And empathy is that thing we develop with each other and we want – we want – and we can feel that closeness to someone. He says: “When I say empathic listening, I am not referring to technics of active listening or reflective listening, which basically involves mimicking what a person says. That kind of listening is skill based, truncated from character and relationships” – notice that, truncated from character and relationships – it’s just skill – “I memorized the last seven or eight words you said – ”truncated from character and relationships, and often insults those listened to in such a way. When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with an intent to understand – seeking first to understand. To really understand is an entirely different paradigm.”

I submit to you that God listens to us with empathic listening. He intends to understand us. There is a reason we pray to Him. There is a reason that He listens. And He learns a lot about us in the course of that listening. When we listen to one another, are we listening because we have a genuine desire to get to understand or get to know someone? Do we understand that listening can be a gift to the other person? Just by listening and showing that interest in the person can lift them up and be a difference in their life. You’ve all been part of conversations where you can tell the person you are talking to just could just care less what you are saying. Right? I mean, you  kind of just want to walk away. “Okay, fine. What I was saying was really boring and not worth anything.” I mean, we’ve all had those experiences in life. It is not a pleasant feeling. We go away kind of feeling dumb, maybe. But if someone is genuinely listening, we think, “Oh, they’re  kind of interested in what I have to say. They’re kind of interested.” And when we’re talking about ourselves, they are kind of interested. When we can draw people out, they are kind of interested. So when we are talking to one another, listening is a gift that we give to one another. There are a lot of ways that we serve each other, right? Jesus Christ is a perfect example of service. He healed everyone that came to Him that was sick. He helped whoever was poor. But look at the gifts that He gave to people like Zacchaeus and Mary Magdalene, people like the woman at the well – the Samaritan woman at the well – the woman caught in adultery, the others of His disciples, and everyone He encountered. He gave them the gift of being really interested in them. We should be really interested in each other. We are all family. We are all part of who God has called and has a purpose for us beyond what today’s physical life is.

Let’s turn to James 1 – James 1, and verse 18:

James 1:18 – Of His own will – it says – He brought us forth by the word of truth. He wanted to call us. He wanted to open our minds. He wanted to lead us to His truth. He wanted to lead us to His church – to His body. By His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. So, then my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear – ah, be swift to hear – be swift to listen. If someone wants to talk, listen. When you’re talking to them, listen. Listen to what they say and maybe listen in another way as well. Be swift to hear and slow to speak and slow to wrath. Be patient with one another. You heard that in the sermonette. One of the ways we’re patient with one another is when we get to know one another. We understand each other. We appreciate each other. We want each other here. We want each other to be in God’s Kingdom. We want all those things for each other.

Going back to marriage a little bit. Mr. Smalley, when he was talking about healing marriage relationships, the very first thing he says in his list – if a marriage is on the rocks; there are problems in it – he tells husbands, “Listen. Listen to what your wife has to say. Listen intently and don’t feel the need to justify what you have done. Don’t feel the need to argue. In fact, don’t do it. Just shut up and listen!” And then you can kind of understand. Justification – just trying to justify ourselves, trying to do these things and having a comment on everything – isn’t really listening. It’s arguing. If we are really going to heal relationships and build relationships, we need to practice some of the things here that we see in the Bible. Number two, if you’re interested – and I think this is very interesting he puts this as number two: Be quick to admit your error. When you are confronted with something, admit it. Admit it. Look at yourself and that goes a long way to building back relationships.

Okay, I am going to give you a quote here. I think you’ll be surprised when hear who made this quote. This man says “More and more I have come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. It can often be our greatest gift. Whether that person is speaking, or playing, or dancing, building, or singing, or painting, if we care, we listen.” Do you know who said that? Fred Rogers. Remember Mr. Rogers? He said that. I guess through his life – in his field – he realized even young people need to be listened to. We can all learn to listen. Listening goes hand and hand with the mind of Christ. If you go back and read Philippians 2: 2 through 5, it talks about“let this mind that was in Christ Jesus be in you.” Look at listening in there and see how it plays an important role in what we are doing.

The other thing that Jesus Christ did is, He asked questions. He asked questions. I’m not going to take the time to go through a lot of the questions that He asked. I saw on the internet where someone had compiled well over a hundred questions that Jesus Christ had asked in the gospels. And there’s something we can learn. But you know, He had a way of not just giving people the answer – not just spitting it out – but He asked questions and He was able to draw out from people what their thoughts really were. He learned a lot by that. I will give you an example. Back in Matthew 16, right before – in Matthew 16:18 – He said He was going to build His church, and “on this rock,” He would build His church. The rock He was referring to was Himself. But before that, He is asking the disciples, “Who do people say that I…” – this is Jesus Christ speaking – “Who do people say that I am?” He listens to what they have to say. Then He asks them, “Well, who do you say that I am?” He was getting to a point there. They had conversations. Again, we don’t have every single word that was spoken to Christ during that. But Peter says, “You are the Son of God.” Christ says, “Blessed are you, Peter, for it is the Holy Spirit – it’s God – that revealed that to you.” He listened to wha t they said, and He learned some things about them. And they came to the conclusion – God gave them that conclusiaon – but He asked a question. It had a far different affect than if He had just gone in and said, “I am telling you, on this Rock, I’m building My church. I’m the Messiah. I’m the Son of Man. Deal with it.” He said, “Who do you say I am.” And they got it. They recognized it. In other cases, you can see where He asked pertinent questions when He was about to do something – the man at the pool of Bethsaida, who was going to be healed. And He asked him – he had been either blind or lame from birth – I think lame from birth – and He asked him, “Do you want to be well?” Now that is a question that goes without saying, right? Anyone who has been blind or lame from birth, would say, “Yes, I want to be well.” But Christ said, “Do you want to be well?” I am sure that man stopped, and thought, “Yeah, I do want to be well.” We might ask ourselves that question, even spiritually. “Do you want to be well?” The only way we get well is through God, through His word, through the healing that comes from Him – not through  the answers that we have or the answers that the world has around us, but through Him.

When the disciples were on the Sea of Galilee, and there was a storm on the ocean, and Christ was asleep...remember? Christ was asleep – remember? – in the hull of the boat and they were afraid they were getting tossed and turned - probably thought the boat was going to capsize and they were going to drown. They were panicked. They went to Him, and said, “Wake up!” He calmed the storm, and said, “Why were you afraid? Why were you afraid. Didn’t you know I was here?” We, somewhere down the road, will be in situations where we find ourselves afraid – up against circumstances that we never – well, maybe we counted on, but never - really saw coming. And we could panic. But we will learn to rely on God – rely on Christ. That is where the strength is. And He might tell us, and a question pop into our minds, “Why are you afraid? Christ can calm the storm. God will see us through. He’s got a plan. He’s got a purpose. His Son will return. He will come to earth and establish His Kingdom.” And, if we have been following God the way He wants us to follow Him, then we will be part with Him for eternity.

Proverbs 20 – Proverbs 20, and verse 5. You know, sometimes as we are getting to know people, sometimes as we’re sitting around our potluck tables, and we’re with someone we may not know as well, there are social things that we do to engage each other and learn with one another. Listening is one thing. Dale Carnegie would say, “Get with the person and ask them some questions about themselves. Learn about them and take some time to get to know them.” One of the ways to do that is with questions. You know, some people will just open up immediately. I often wish I had the gift of gab, where I could just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk and be able to relate everything that has happened to me. But sometimes, not everyone is that way. Nice if you are, but sometimes, other people have to be drawn out. Jesus Christ, who worked with all personalities – because when you look at the twelve disciples, they had all personalities. Some were very outspoken, like Peter and Paul, but others were very quiet, more reserved. Jesus Christ knew them all. They all served Him and they all have a place. And He says, “Those twelve will be kings over the nations of Israel.” But here in Proverbs 20, and verse 5, it says:

Proverbs 20:5 – Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water. We all have things that are bottled up in us – deep within us – things that we may hide, things that define us, that we may not be so open to share. And I don’t mean our sins and faults or anything like that. The counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but the man of understanding will draw it out. Jesus Christ was a man of understanding. He was able to draw out those things. And a good question, a thoughtful question, can help draw that out. It’s one of the things we can use to develop relationships.

You know, when I was putting this together, I was thinking back to the times that probably a lot of our young people do not even know. There were times like that, when dating was dating. You know, today I look at dating, and I read the things on the internet, and I hear from some of our high-schoolers – what things are like in high school – and certainly things in college. It seems like today, when people date, it’s like within five minutes or one dinner, they decide, “Yes, I want a relationship with this person,” or “No, I’ve judged. I want nothing to do with them.” I think, “What a horrible situation that is – that we live in a society that makes a judgement on someone within an hour or two, and just kind of casts it off.” You know, if Debbie had made a determination on me in one date, we wouldn’t be married. You know, it took some time to get to know one another. She had to learn – and I had to learn some things about her, too – but you know what? The more we learned, the more we appreciated, the more we loved. And we found out, you know what? There’s a deep love. It takes time. It doesn’t happen in one date. It doesn’t happen in one dinner. There are times when we can do that. I hope, in the church, it’s never to the point where we would sit with someone one time, and say, “I want nothing to do with you. I’m going to shun this person from here on out.” Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It is not of God. If He had done that to you and me, where would all of us be? None of us would be sitting here. If He had said in one prayer to us, “You know what, this person is a lost cause. I don’t want anything to do with him,” none of us would be here. We have to take the time, we have to make the time, we have to grow together. We have to get back, in the church, to the things where…even with our young people – and so many of them are over in Tampa today – and I wish they were here…we have to get to know each other and appreciate each other. We have to take the time. And we need to build some things into our lives where that time happens, and we don’t just check someone off just because we may not just hit it off the way we hoped that we should. That’s the way of the world, not the way of God.
So, listening – and the key is, we genuinely develop an interest in each other and have that interest in each other, which is something that God does with us, and something that Jesus Christ had with all of His people. There are tools that we can use.

One area is service, too. I mentioned that I was going to mention something on listening, here. You know, we listen to words, but Jesus Christ listened to a lot more than words. He listened and He could see body language. He could feel emotion in voices. He could see how someone was responding to Him. He listened a lot more than just listening to their words, because words can be very practiced. Words can be very – I don’t want to use the word deceptive – but they can be kind of misleading. But He listened to it all. We listen to each other and we can show importance to each other by listening and seeing how people are. If we see someone by themselves, go talk to them. Have that act of service and love – that you would serve and show interest in your brother that way. Do the things that we can. Jesus Christ was not above doing any of those things for people and there are many ways that we can handle those situations, and more ways to serve someone than handing them money, helping them move, or cleaning up their yard. Those are all good. Those are well, but there are more ways that we can serve one another and show “You are important. You’re important to me. You’re important to church” – just the way that God would say to you and to me, “You are all important.” We can do that, and we need to do that. And we need to practice that and we need to grow more together as God’s church.

James 5. You know, it takes two, they say, to tango and when you are getting to know each other, we can show the interest. The other party needs to open up a little bit, too. It takes two to make a relationship. It can’t be all one-sided. Here in James 5:16, I think that’s one of the things that God is showing us. This is the chapter and the verses in here that says, “If anyone is sick let them call on the elders of the church and a pray of faith will be prayed over them.” In verse 16, he says:

James 5:16 – Confess your trespasses to one another. Talk about it. Now again, I am not saying, and I don’t want to see people running around saying, “This is what I did back in 1983, and this is what I did in 2012.” That is not what he’s talking about here. Open up. Open up. You know, we have a town hall meeting next week. I hope you open up if you have concerns or questions. That is okay. No one is going to say, “That’s a bad idea.” We want to hear those things. We want to hear the things we can do to help the congregation grow together and feel more comfortable with one another, and become what God wants us to be, so when someone walks in they say, “Ahh, that is God’s church. How do I know that? Because they have agape for one another.” Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

So, as we are looking at relationships, seek first to understand. Become genuinely interested in other people. Show them that you care. Show them that they are all important, because we are all important. And every single one of us is important to God and every single one of us is important to each other.