Ministry of Listening

Almost everybody and everything out there want to tell you what to do. Everyone knows better than you do about you. Just try posting something odd on Facebook and someone's apt to correct, counsel or outright tell you what to do, even if your post has absolutely nothing to do with you. Everyone's aching to find cracks or loopholes to your weakness and then lecture.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash.

Don't get me wrong. Children must listen to their parents and obey, even those past 18 but still in their parents' tutelage. Teachers have a limited measure of lecturing and disciplining rights with their students when inside the classroom. And bosses as well, with their subordinates in the office. But other than that, people should not be too eager to offer advices, especially if they're not asked to.

Everybody Wants to be Your Pastor

This is especially so with religious people, or those who think they're more spiritual than others. They either feel obligated to correct every erring creature they see on the planet or see you as a lost underling needing their counsel. They always have a thing or two to teach you and they want you all ears to them. I call them pedantic smart Alecks. A spiritual pedant is meticulous about your errors in Christian life (or what they think are errors) and just too eager to show you your fault and lecture you.

Apostle James says the Word of God is a mirror. Well, these lecturers want to be that mirror.

They all want to be your mentor or leader or pastor but no one is willing to sit down and take mentoring from others--except us 😄. Everybody wants to be above everyone else and be great. Well, Jesus says otherwise. He says the least is the greatest, which is among his apostolic teachings. But no one believes that today, not even the modern church. No one there wants to be least. They all want to have their say and be heard, recognized, acclaimed, hailed and have the mega-est church of all.

You're Arrogant If You Don't Listen to Them

They all want to dump their tons of opinions and advices on you and have you listening and doing their bidding. If not, you're "not teachable." You don't have a teachable heart 😆. You're arrogant. Teachable to them is when you listen to everything they say and follow their advices. But do these lecturers have teachable hearts? It's not for you to ask. Don't change topic. What matters is, you listen to them and do as you're told so you'd have a teachable heart. 😆

A lot of people want to be my lecturers. When they see how I don't take their advice or am not impressed, they decide I'm arrogant and unteachable. I listen to them but often don't buy their ideas. And they're offended and think I lack humility. I am teachable but I know where to get advices from. I choose who I take counsel from and not every lecturer out there fits. They should all just keep mum and wait to be asked for their opinion. But they're not capable of that. Blabbers just can't get it. They just talk and lecture.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak
and slow to become angry, 
[James 1.19]

White hair sometimes indicates wisdom, not just lack of Vitamin D. My hair is all white. I mean, in my 62 years on earth I have seen, heard and learned a lot. I've read a lot as well. I've worked years both in secular managerial jobs and church ministries. Yet, I don't offer my opinions unasked. I wait to be sought. If no one does, I keep quiet and just listen. Most times, people just need someone to listen. They don't want your advice, especially your stupid advice. 

What they need more are your prayers. And often you don't need to tell them that, except if God tells you to. "Telling" people things like that usually falls under the ministry of blabbermouth lecturing, more so if God doesn't want you to do it. Even Jesus spoke only when the Father wanted him to, making sure he said what the Father wanted him to say and how. 

I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. [John 12.49]

For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. [KJV]

They Hate the Ministry of Listening

Everybody seems aching to do a ministry in church but no one wants to be in a real ministry. They all love the ministry of lecturing--or, as mentioned, blabbermouth ministry (I love how I coined that). My Jesus, aside from lecturing and preaching to crowds that desperately wanted to hear him (they literally begged for his lectures so it wasn't blabbermouth), spent time just willingly listening to people. He didn't offer unsolicited advice. Instead, he asked them what they wanted personally (but he never let people's needs sway his ministry, though. He did only the Father's will when it came to his ministry, though he sometimes asked people about their personal needs).

To lots of church people, listening is too menial, low-grade, low-status. There's no glamor in it. You just sit there, do nothing but listen and remain unimpressionable. They hate that. You don't become popular that way, and anything that keeps you away from the limelight is a waste of time to them. It's no way to be a great leader. Everyone in church fusses a lot about leadership. There's nothing about followership. Followers are looked down on. 

I've seen church goers changing memberships when the church they attend doesn't recognize their potential, or if no one pays attention to them there. Pag hindi sila bida dun, lilipat nanaman sila sa iba. Eventually, I see them back to the original church they left because at least there they are looked on as leaders. Bida sila dun. Remember the unclean spirit Jesus talked about that leaves a person and goes around seeking rest in arid places? Then, finding none, it decides to go back where it came from. It's something like that.

Just Listen

It's a much needed ministry these days---listening. Even some church leaders, counsellors, pastors and preachers badly need someone to listen to them and understand the secret things they're going through. What more the ordinary church goers? Often, you need to just listen to these suffering, agonizing souls. Believe me, a lot of them (church members and leaders, and nonbelievers, too) are depressed, stressed or burned out or badly need their starving egos to be fed. Often (not always), they want to lecture to people, not because God wants them to do so, but because their egos need to. Though it feeds their flesh, sometimes God will tell you to listen to them, not really to feed their egos but to kill yours. Egocentrics are a pain in the neck (or the ass) to listen to, and it'll kill you doing so.

Listening kills the ego. This is why no one wants to do it, especially no one in church. Well, at least, most of them don't. Blabbering feeds the ego a lot and if you feed on it you'd never get in on the frequencies of the Holy Spirit of God.

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, 
I will be exalted in the earth.”

Isaiah 46.10

“These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at my word."

Isaiah 66.2