Hearing, Listening, and Understanding After Hours

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are talking this week about a topic that impacts every single one of us. I promise you this topic affects us in one way or another. Harold, do you want to tell us a little bit about the topic that we're talking about today?

Remind us. We're talking about the difference between hearing and listening and how they're related. You can hear without listening, but you can't listen without hearing. Good point. I heard you.

Those are just easy. Wayne, did you have something you want to add? No, you were looking at the microphone. You and Rodney are like microphone stares today.

There you go. Harold, do you have a clip that we didn't get in the first episode that's really timely considering our show is on 9-11. This is from the movie World Trade Center. It's a clip from that movie. Fortunately, before I left home to come to the studio, the guy that the movie was based on, or the clip, he was a Marine, a policeman, an iron worker. He had traits that were ideally suited for what the clip is talking about. He feels called by God to go to the Trade Center, which he does, and ends up saving two policemen that were trapped down in the wreckage.

It's really something, the true story. Of course, this is just a small snippet of where he's describing the call from God to go and help. And his name's Dave, is that right?

Carnes, I believe, is the last name. Dave. I spent my best years with the Marines. God gave me a gift to be able to help people to defend our country. I feel him calling on me now for this mission.

Then find a way to listen to him. Yeah, so we have the hearing and the listening mentioned here, and he actually goes, and he wasn't supposed to be there, but he dressed up in his Marine uniform and just bluffed his way through, ended up down in the wreckage, and found two policemen who were trapped, and actually saved them. Beautiful, beautiful story, and it emphasizes listening to God. Darrell Bock Thanks, Harold. Rodney, back over to you.

You actually have a clip that you want to talk about for this topic as well, right? Rodney Jones Well, this one that, yeah, we all kind of went wild and had so many clips, and this one is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and Harold liked this one to fit in with his topic. You've got two men that are on their way back home over Thanksgiving having struggles with flights and weather and things of that nature, and they have the wild adventure of driving back to basically Chicago and then up to Wisconsin where one of them lives. But on this particular scene, they've been driving late at night. They've been falling asleep and waking up and all kinds of other stuff, and the car's now going where they think they're going, but it's actually going into oncoming traffic.

That's what's going on in the scene, and the guy in the passenger seat wakes up, looks over across the road, and can tell these people are honking and yelling at them and trying to figure out what to get in their attention, so they have the little conversation, and basically what they're trying to do is they're not listening and hearing what they're trying to say because they have their own thoughts of where they're at and where they're going. Oh, he's probably drunk. You're going the wrong way!

What? You're going the wrong way! He said you're going the wrong way. Oh, he's drunk. How would he know where we're going?

Yeah, how would he know? Thank you, thanks a lot. Terrific.

Thank you! What a moron. You're going in the wrong direction! You're going to kill somebody!

You're going the wrong way! What? What?

What? And the crash that never ends. That was a never-ending crash.

I was like, oh my gosh. That is the longest crash scene ever. But that's what ends up happening. You end up in a crash when you don't listen and don't try to pay attention, when you have your own perceptions and that's all you want to do and you can't try to understand what somebody's trying to warn you about sometimes, you know?

You just got to go run straight right into that brick wall anyway, just headstrong. That's where I spent most of my life and, you know, make relationships and things and just, I know with my wife, you know, just constantly, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, it's kind of like the peanuts teacher. That's what I would, that's what I'd be hearing. Yeah, honey, I hear you and I'd go off and do my own thing and do my own way and that doesn't help very much, you know? It doesn't, you know, I think about being a parent, right? And you try to help your kids not fall into the same traps that you fell into and you can tell them and tell them and tell them and some of them work but for the most part, they have to kind of experience them themselves to really realize that, you know, it's kind of the same way in doing any type of training or teaching but, you know, at some level, you learn more from your mistakes than you do from your accomplishments. Yeah, that's even in my professional life, that's a lot of what we try to do with people is have them try things, small things so they make small errors before they make the big error, you know? And it's the same thing here and that's one of the things too but what you want to do as a parent is also model the right thing and have the right actions because if they see, they can see through the faking. Why are you looking at me, man?

The faking, well. You're staring, you're speaking right at me, I'm feeling hurt, I'm listening to you, it's hurting me. I'm sorry, Sam, but, you know, we kind of have an intervention here. No, that's fine, that's fine. But that's where my life was always at. It's microphone envy.

It is, it is. So when you're sitting there talking, it's one thing but they can tell by your demeanor, your body language, are you really listening to mom and paying attention to her or are you not? And that's one of the things that, you know, is probably one of the worst things I can remember from being a parent and being a spouse is just not being engaged, being in my own world, doing my own thing and just everybody else is just, okay, yeah, I have to pay attention to you because that's what I'm supposed to do but then I'm going to get back to me. Yeah. Yeah. I resemble that sometimes. Now, Robby, you went in a totally different direction than the rest of the group, which is not abnormal.

No, and I could end up in a crash, you know. No, you usually have a very valid point that you're making in a different direction. I meant that as a compliment. So as you might guess, it has to do with Hebrew and in the Hebrew letter that kind of means expression that you should be listening to is the letter hey and it actually means kind of what it sounds like, which is to be expressing oneself and, of course, God expresses himself to it.

So really cool. In the 119th Psalm, King David is going to give us a lesson on how to determine what's being expressed from God very specifically and so he begins this series of prayers in eight different verses on how to incline our hearts, so to speak, to hear because most of the time, for me, you know, there are several issues involved in being able to listen. One is which way do I lean, you know, where my prejudice is already on the matter or if I think I know and those kind of things. So when it gets down to the 36th verse, he says incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness. In other words, he's talking about inclining his heart. And then he says turn my eyes away from seeing vanity and quicken thou me in thy way, which essentially is saying bring me to life in Jesus, but first you've got to get your eyes off of what you're looking at, which has to do with your self-interest and not dying to self, right?

And so he says incline my heart and then he says turn my eyes away. Then he asked that he be able to hear thy word, but he says because your servant is devoted to thy fear. You see, what you fear and what you love has a lot to do with how you listen. When you're scared to death, you listen completely differently. Like believe me, when God gets your attention, at times you listen very clearly. And so what King David is actually doing here, which I think is absolutely beautiful, is he is within his prayer asking God for these very specific things to help him to actually go beyond the point of hearing and to not only listening and not only understanding but then applying and implementing, you know, what it is that God's asked him to do.

So we have a clip here from Facing the Giants. Darrell Bock Before you get to the clip, I mean seriously, can you summarize those points again? Because I think it's important for people to really hear them and be able to put them to use. I'm sure you said them, right?

I heard you say them, right? But again, to help them succinctly understand what those points David was making. He's making these points of what they call emotional health, and they are that you have love and respect that Paul talks about, but actually it's love and fear. So what do you love and what you fear have to do with how you listen?

And he's also your heart. Incline my heart. Help me lean towards you rather than lean towards the things where you're not. And then he says to the eyes, speak to the eyes, because faith comes by hearing, and of course you've gotten all this trouble from seeing, right? And so many sins happen as a mold of looking at covetousness rather than looking at God. So he's talking about inclining your heart, asking that he turn your eyes back towards what he has in mind.

You know, obviously the loving with the whole heart. That's a King David thing right from the very basic. And then again, being devoted to thy fear. It's of respect of what that is. So, yeah, no. Sure. Does that help?

Yeah, no, it did help quite a bit. Thank you. So in the facing the Giants clip that we're going to hear here, this young man is saying they're going to lose. And quite often, you know, the person we're listening to is ourself rather than to God. So the guy's heart is not inclined to what God has in mind for what's best for him, but what he thinks. And so here the coach kind of takes the place of giving this young man some faith based on taking away his vision.

So watch, listen carefully to the clip. What does he do? He puts a blindfold on the boy so he can't see, you know, how far he's gone. And then he asks him to give his best effort. But then the voice that he's going to be hearing throughout this exercise is not going to be anything other than, you know, you can do it. You have what it takes.

I think you can do it with Jeremy on your back. But even if you can, I want you to promise me you're going to do your best. All right. You're going to give me your best. I'm going to give you my best.

All right, one more thing. I want you to do it blindfolded. Why?

Because I want you giving up at a certain point when you can go further. Get down. Jeremy, get on his back. Now get a good, tight hold, Jeremy. All right. Let's go, Brock. Keep your knees off the ground.

Just your hands and feet. There you go. A little bit left. Don't stop, Brock. You got more than you than that.

How you doing? Just rest for a second. You got to keep moving. Let's keep moving. Let's go. Don't quit till you got nothing left.

There you go. Keep moving. Keep moving. It hurts. Don't quit on me. Your very best. Keep driving. Keep driving. There you go.

There you go. He's heavy. I know he's heavy. I'm bad at strength.

Then you negotiate with your body to find more strength. But don't you give up on me, Brock. You keep going. You hear me? You keep going. You're doing good. You keep going. Do not quit on me. Give me your arm. You can't.

You can't. Find more. Find more. Come on, Brock. Come on. Don't quit.

Don't quit. Come on, Brock. Do more. Find more. Look up, Brock.

You're in the end zone. So there you go. Once, you know, if we would just walk by faith and not by sight, faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God.

And so it has to do with listing Harold by all means. But you got to get that word, you know, from my standpoint, you know, the best advice I ever got in my whole life was spend time in the Word, however you do that daily, you know, whatever, however it fixes into your schedule. And in doing so, he can speak to me.

But he speaks through his Word most often. I think one of the inventions that was made for us to be able to communicate more effectively actually works in the opposite direction is our phone, right? If I have my phone and I'm looking at it, it's a good chance I'm not paying attention to what you're saying to me.

Now, that's not always true. I can multitask a little bit, but it's strained at best, you know, lots of times unless I'm looking something up. And so, you know, that's one of those things where for me, in reality, when I really want to pay full attention, I have to look at the person and not look at anything else and try not to think of anything else and listen to what they have to say. You know, I've told the story on here before I realized a long time ago when I was married that I could not go to a restaurant that had TVs or if I did, they always had to be at my back because I was not going to listen to anything that my wife had to say because it didn't matter if it was soccer that was on and I don't like soccer, I'm watching it, you know, it's in front of me, it's on and it's entertaining. Not that she wasn't, I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that that was one of the things I had to reconcile within me to say, okay, now, okay, attentiveness for me means no other distraction. I hadn't heard anything y'all said since you mentioned a parfait, I'm just saying. Yeah, exactly.

McDonald's on the way home, by the way, if you want to stop. It is, there's two of them. I was thinking about a scenario with my wife early on in our marriage because I'm a technician by heart and I fix things and we were having a conversation and she was telling me something. I don't remember what it is, I tell you how well I was listening, but it was several years ago and I immediately go into fix it mode. I heard about her first three or four sentences and realized there was a problem and I'm already thinking of a solution and I hadn't heard anything and she stops in the middle of it and says, stop. She said, I don't want you to fix it, I just want you to listen. And I thought, what good is that? Why are you telling me? And now being in a role where I listen to people on the phone and help them with technical stuff, I've had to learn to listen to what they're saying because I can't see what they're doing and we're playing with electricity.

So every once in a while that's kind of comical. You knew they touched the wrong thing, but to listen better so that I can more effectively help them with the problem. Great point. Anyone else got a point? Well, I just know that I've been spending a lot of time in the book of John lately, which is on this topic, it's hilarious because every time I go back through it and I reread it, it just laughs because it's a continuing cycle of, I'm telling you who I am, oh, who are you? I'm telling you who I am, who are you? So a lot of the different passages, it's like what I like about the understanding, Harold, that we had here is everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

So if you've learned and heard from the Father, you're going to understand who Jesus is because some are His and some are not. And then they start telling Him, you're testifying about yourself, your testimony is not true. They're not listening. They don't want it to be true. They've got something already made up in their minds.

How often are we just like this? And then later on, so they were saying to Him, who are You? And Jesus said to them, what have I been saying to you from the beginning? Could you imagine the frustration if He was human? I would just be blown up by now, just yelling and screaming at them and trying to kick the box in my office a little bit.

That's what I'd be doing. And then later on, He's like, why do you not understand what I'm saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your Father, the devil, and you want to do desires of your Father.

So there's all these different things. And then I love it later on when Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Like, oh, He's just being humble, right? Jesus is like, oh my gosh, dude, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show me the Father? It's so funny that how you look at this book, the Bible, and the stories in it and how it just keeps coming back to, I can look at myself in the mirror of that Bible and go, Rodney, I think you're doing the same thing. You're doing this with either these people or with God Himself. It's like, don't you believe what He says? Don't you take that in and believe that you are truly the Son of God and He loves you and He is pleased with you?

Even though you're an idiot and do all kinds of other things at times, He knows really who you are. And that's hard for us to go there and just believe in that. Darrell Bock Agreed.

It is. Dr. Darrell Bock One of the other things that jumps out at me, I used to do a show called Jesus Junkets and we did a show on a missionary from Somalia who was talking to these refugees that, if you could imagine, it was one of the worst humane disaster, humanity disasters of all time, people starving to death all over the place. There was all sorts of war, all kinds of starving, and these missionaries would come into these camps and there would be, everybody would be dead but one or two or three people. And so they came in and they would have water, they would have body bags, they would have, you know, like, do you need a body bag to bury your family? Do you need water?

Do you need food? They had these things like this. And what he discovered, what the people's biggest need was, before they got the food, before they got the body bags, or before they got anything else, is they wanted to tell their story. They wanted to be heard. And I've never forgotten, I mean, we don't realize the value of listening to somebody's story. That it, that whole hey is like this humongous need we all have to be heard and to matter. And so it's a really unique gift that we have, sometimes just the ability to sit and hear somebody's story with interest and feel like, you know, that their life made a difference. It's really a cool thing. And I feel really petty about my whole pickle thing, you know, where the place that we eat before we come here, says on the menu, pickle spear upon request. I've requested it many times. I've yet to get one, you know, and it's not the pickle.

I have pickles at home, right? But it goes You're making a big deal out of it. No, no, no. I am making a big deal out of it. Big deal.

Big deal. It goes to personal woundedness, obviously, right? But it goes to a societal woundedness that we're not listened to. Right? That's the biggest thing I think people get angry about is just not being heard. Right? Right.

That's what that's what all the things that that's a catalyst. It's when you know, I don't feel like I'm being heard. You don't feel like you're being heard. Someone else doesn't feel like you're being heard. Oh, you're going to hear me.

Yeah, that becomes in the mentality at some point, if they don't keep if they don't completely withdraw. Right. And so just stopping and listening to one another, how much different would our homes be? How much different would our ministries be? How much different would, you know, our restaurants be? No. No, this is a great place to eat. I love the place. But now how much different would our our country be our world be?

At this point, if we could just stop and listen and let people tell their story, and not try to manipulate it or move it in five different directions? Yeah, I mean, I was kind of dumbfounded that I was out dove hunting with Rodney on Saturday. Clay is calling me, you know.

And I'm just a friend. And I'm like, man, what's he I'm trying to hunt here. But oh, my gosh, his aunt had died. And as he was sharing all that, then he had found her. And the story that was all behind that, and what was on his heart, it was, you know, just share that thing.

Man. Oh, you know, what an honor to be to be on the recipient of somebody that needs to share that and feel like you're the guy to bring it to. And, you know, God does that for all of us all the time.

Other than time, what does it require from us? Really we all have the ability to listen. There's a few people I've questioned.

You know, I think we all have the ability. It's just whether we have a the discipline or be we take the time and do the things we need to to listen fully. That sort of I was very amused when you did your and you have to go back and listen to the original broadcast of this. But you were talking about I started to say complaining.

But I was that's the way I heard it. It's probably not the way you meant it about the people repeating back to you what they thought they heard you say. And I was laughing because that is something that's taught everybody to do because it's active listening.

And that was one of the things that was big and any kind of counseling. And we can be doing the tricks to listen and not hear what's being said. Oh, yeah, I wish we could have played the clip from anger management. Whereas sometimes people are just trying to get to the point they want to make versus, you know, really listening. And I was complaining, Jim, actually.

So you hit the nail on the head. You heard me fine. I was complaining.

And I think the active listening comes in when someone's done talking, not in the middle of their sentence. And that could be the difference. It was literally green with envy. He was making a big deal. And I was in a pickle.

It's a pickle. I never got to make my point. I can ask you like a couple of times. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.