Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
James 1:19 KJV
It has been said that the reason God gave us two ears and one mouth is because He wanted us to listen twice as much as we speak. Let that sink in for a minute. This truism has always been a powerful axiom for me and perhaps one of the hardest to observe on a consistent basis. You see, I’m a Comm major, and on top of having an advanced degree in the field of human communication, I also possess the gift of gab. Why use 5 words to explain something when you can use 50!?
Listening is a lost art. We are generally poorer listeners than we think. Oft times our hearing prowess isn’t listening at all; it’s rather something we call pseudo listening. We listen just long enough to gain a sense of what we think the other person is saying and then we move to crafting our response in our heads. The terrible thing about this propensity is we never really listened to the other persons complete thought or line of reasoning. This is a very common bad listening habit that disables us from really hearing others.
God help us to listen twice as much as we speak. Amen.