Engaging Others With Love, Kindness and Service

For Jesus, often real ministry was the person he found standing in front of him. And so sometimes we need to ask ourselves, who is that for me today? Is it a toddler who's asking me to fill their sippy cup for the tenth time that day? Is it my neighbor who's grieving?

Is it my coworker who's standing in front of me? Not worrying about the thing, the great grand thing I'm on my way to do, but knowing when God's kind of tapping me on the heart saying stop, notice this person, especially notice that person who least expects to be seen. That's what Jesus did. That's Karen Eamon, and she'll have more insights about how you can better love God and love people on today's Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us.

I'm John Fuller. John, kindness when it's received is rarely forgotten by that person. It's one of the great secrets of loving your neighbor. Very few people, I've never met anybody that's been harassed into the kingdom of God. I'll say it in an audience, has anybody been beaten or verbally harassed into the kingdom of God?

Never once has a hand gone up. Those Christians treated me so poorly, I became one of them. It's usually unusual love and kindness that opens a crusty heart to the possibility that God is. And today, we're going to expand on that and talk about Listen, Love, and Repeat, a great book by one of our favorite guests, Karen Eamon. And let's set it up with 1 John 4.12. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. And that should be the cry of each of our hearts, that God's love would abide in us and that others would come into relationship with God because of the love they experience from us, which is from the Father. And Karen Eamon works for Proverbs 31 Ministries.

She has three adult children and has written a number of books. Jim, you mentioned the title of Listen, Love, and Repeat. The subtitle is Other-Centered Living in a Self-Centered World. And it's good to have Karen back. Karen, welcome. Thanks for having me. Always love.

You got such a big smile and just great, great outlook on life. Speak to this issue of the way love seems to be growing cold in the culture. It seems like there's a lot of influences working against our spirit, the Spirit of God in us, to show love to other people, especially people we disagree with.

Why? I sometimes wonder if it's always been that way, but we just have better ways of documenting it now with social media. We sling our unsolicited opinion. And it's not just our neighbor across the picket fence that hears us sling our unsolicited opinion about something or be snarky about something. Everyone on our Facebook wall sees it. Everyone on our Twitter or wherever sees it and it grows.

People jump on and they give their unsolicited two cents worth. And now we're in an all-out war slinging hate rather than being kind and loving to other people. You talk about a story in the book, Listen, Love, Repeat, about your mom and what she taught you in this regard. What did your mom teach you about love? My mom and I are extremely opposite personalities.

She's very quiet and shy and hangs in the background and I'm just always yakking a mile a minute. But one thing I saw in her life that I wanted to emulate was just the way that she put other people first. You can't get her to talk about herself. She just wants to know about you and what's going on with you. And she had an uncanny ability to just really listen to people and then respond with something that was kind, some little piece of information she tucked away like maybe it was just their favorite candy bar or something. And if her coworker was having a bad day, guess what?

That favorite candy bar was left with a cute little note on their desk. She just always was on the lookout for how she could make someone else's day better. She was thoughtful.

She was very thoughtful. And I remember one time in middle school going to her because I would, I don't know, I was upset about something. It's middle school. Yeah, it's middle school. There's something to be upset about every day.

I probably didn't get invited to a slumber party or something. And I was all down on my life and I'll never forget what she said to me. She said, you know, whenever you think your life is just not going well, you're depressed about something, remember this. There's always someone out there who has it worse off than you. Go find that person and make their day.

And somehow I'm promising you, honey, it'll make yours as well. And I saw my mom who was a single mom living on a budget so tight it squeaked. She never seemed down on her life.

She was always so other centered and thinking about how she could make someone else's day that she just seemed to be very content with her life. That's amazing. In fact, in the book, you talk about heart drops, and that was probably the beginning of the formulation of that. Expand on the definition of heart drops and tell our listeners what you meant. Yeah, it's something my mom was doing, but I never had a name for it until I was in a small group with my husband and our group leader, Michael, talked about hearing a heart drop. And a heart drop is a way of kind of listening between the lines when someone's saying something because they're saying something without saying it. Maybe you're talking about some medical tests that you have next Thursday and I sense a little bit of concern in your voice.

Well, I can remember that. I can pull out my notes app on my phone or write something down in my planner that says, hey, you know, there's these tests happening next Thursday. Maybe I should text you that morning and say, hey, I'm praying for you or call that night and say, how did it go? You know, kind of listening between the lines, but also just recording seemingly insignificant pieces of information about someone and just asking God to bring that back to your mind in the future sometime when you might want to use it to encourage them.

I'll give you an example. I have a friend who sent her only child off to college and I knew she was going to have a hard day that day that the school bus pulled up for high school and her son had been dropped off the night before about an hour and a half away at college and I had been with her probably six months before that when she gave her very high maintenance coffee order at the coffee house and I'd gone down and I put it in my phone. So that morning I showed up when her child was gone to school with her favorite coffee drink and a box of Kleenex and I said, I'm here for you. If you want to cry, you can cry on my shoulder. And I handed her to the drink and she said, oh, what'd you bring me?

A mocha? And I said, no, I brought you a and I rattled off her high maintenance, 102 degree, extra web, double cup, blah, blah, this whole thing. And she said, how did you know?

And I said, because silly, I wrote it down the last time we were together. So just listening for those little emotions in people's voices or those seemingly insignificant pieces of information and then later on doing something to bless them. Wow. How amazing that would be in marriages for each of us as spouses to be that attuned to the little things between the lines. Throughout scripture, Jesus modeled never being too busy for others.

I think you can see that clearly. He moved through the crowds and people grabbed at him. He healed people. He came away to what seems to be to recharge himself and to pray and to do those things. But he seemed available. How did you relate that to our days today?

How do we become available in the hectic, busy life that we all have today? Yeah, it's interesting when you read through the gospel accounts, often Jesus was on his way to do something big and grand, but he would stop and take time to notice just one simple person, whether it was the woman with the issue of blood who needed healing, but he was on his way to do this miracle, you know. He felt her. But he stopped. Yeah, he felt her. He stopped.

He noticed her. I heard it said once, and I wish I could remember who said it because it's been a couple of decades ago now, but I've never forgotten. That means you said it. No, I didn't. But I was listening to a preacher on the radio. I wish I could remember who. And he said this, that for Jesus, often real ministry was the person he found standing in front of him.

Wow. And so sometimes we need to ask ourselves, who is that for me today? Is it a toddler who's asking me to fill their sippy cup for the 10th time that day? Is it my neighbor who's grieving?

Is it my coworker who I feel like maybe something's not right with them and they're upset about something? Who's standing in front of me, not worrying about the thing, the great grand thing I'm on my way to do, but knowing when God's kind of tapping me on the heart saying, stop, notice this person, especially notice that person who least expects to be seen. That's what Jesus did. Hey, in your resource, Listen, Love, Repeat, I'm always looking as I read through the books and the material for profound questions. And you remind people of the two reasons that they're here on earth. When you see that written down, you're going, okay, what are they? Because I want to know, are they the two I would agree with?

And tell us what those are from your perspective. The woman who first told me about Jesus was the one who said this to me. She said, Kieran, there are so many things you can do where you're here on earth. And there are a lot of really great things, very admirable things you can aspire to do. But when it all boils down, there are two reasons we're here on earth, to have a relationship with God who offers us a place in heaven, and to take as many people as we can with us, to tell them about the gospel so that they too can enjoy God forever in heaven. That's what it all boils down to. When you are dead and gone, nothing else really matters. In eternity, it doesn't matter what kind of house you had or what kind of car you drove or how many accolades you racked up for yourself in your profession. Really, none of that matters anymore in eternity.

All that matters is your relationship with God and your relationship with others as you point them to having a relationship with God. One of the five pillars we have here at focus is that pillar of evangelism. And we need to remind people that if you don't know the Lord, and there are many that listen to focus on the family that don't know the Lord, they like good marriage and parenting advice. But if you don't have a relationship with Jesus, what Karen is saying there is so true.

It's frivolous. I mean, life is about knowing God, and then walking with them in this life, so that you can help others and you can enjoy a fruitful existence. If you're not there, call us. We have counselors, we have resources to help walk you through what a decision for Jesus means. And we would want to start right there. It's the building block for everything you're trying to do right with your family, your marriage, your parenting. So call us or contact us. If you're in that spot, you don't know the Lord, you don't know what language we're speaking right now.

Let us introduce you to Him. And also in the book, there were some heavy emotions that you expressed. One is when you had a miscarriage. And a friend of yours did something that meant so much to you.

What happened? I got a lot of phone calls and cards and well wishes from people hoping, you know, that I would get through this tough time. But I had a friend who just showed up at my door with a box of Kleenex and some Godiva chocolate, I think it was, and just sat and cried with me and said, I know exactly how you feel. I lost a baby too. And it was just that me too moment where someone says, you know, you've heard friendship is true friendships born in the moment when someone else says me too.

I think CS Lewis maybe said that I might be quoting that wrong. But she had one of those me too moments with me and she just sat and let me talk and let me cry. She didn't try to fix it. She didn't try to say, oh, well, you know, probably something was going to be wrong with the baby anyway.

It's a blessing that, you know, some of these things that people said where they thought they were helping me but they weren't. Well intentioned. Very well intentioned, but it hurt my heart. I didn't want to hear, you know, why I was suddenly supposed to be happy about this because I was stuck in my sorrow. And she just sat with me in the pain. Didn't say a whole lot other than, you know, this is awful.

And I know how it feels because I was there too. And I just want to be with you. Karen, so often as human beings, especially in the modern culture, how you doing?

Doing great and their marriage is falling apart. The point I want to make is how do you develop a heart, a skill set, whatever you want to call it, to be able to sit with somebody who's grieving because it's kind of uncomfortable. You don't necessarily know what to say. You don't want to say the wrong thing. You can tie yourself up into knots to where you say, well, it's just easier not to go.

What advice do you have to be a comforter? I think we just have to be very honest with that person and say, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I just know I love you. And this is not good.

What has happened? I hurt for you. My heart just can't stop thinking about this tragedy you've gone through, this loss you've suffered. But I don't know, like, all of the right slick things to say. I just want you to know I love you. And I not only want to know what do you need, what can I do for you, but just go ahead and do some things. You know, if you know that they have a child that still needs to go to their T-ball game but they just lost their parent and they're grieving, just say, hey, and I want to let you know next two weeks I'm on T-ball schedule.

I'm taking your child to T-ball. You know, it's an important thing to capture. And for me, you know, I had a hard life growing up as orphan kid and all that kind of stuff. And one of the failures I can have is kind of the pick up yourself by your bootstraps attitude. So I don't always convey enough heart, you know, because I'm like, hey, you can get through it. I got through it.

It sounds horrible, but you can default to that if you came up that way and you had a rough life. It's like, come on, you can do it. I know you can do it. I remember one time talking to Jean and she was suffering through something with her family. And, and I, I think I even may have said that. I just said, come on, we got to move forward.

And she just looked at me in a tender way and just said, Jim, not everybody can pick themselves up by the bootstraps and go. And I'm one of those kinds of people, man, it hit me like a brick and you got to develop a sensitivity. And you're talking about being wired for relationship.

That's the amazing thing here. As you describe what you're uncovering and listen, love and repeat is how God has wired our heart for people. If we move into it, not away from people, he demonstrated it. He wanted us to move toward people. And it's one of the signs of a healthy believer that you're willing to, to be engaged with people in their grief.

Life's messy. We want to grow spiritually, but sometimes we just want that to be just us and God alone. You know, give me my Bible and my journal and I'm going to grow spiritually. And I'm just going to be this giant of the faith because I just know all the right Bible verses and I just can quote them to you. But really I've seen the most growth in my walk with the Lord as that's been fleshed out in my relationship with others, whether it's family members, friends, you know, the grumpy neighbor who I don't really want to have a relationship with, but God's calling me to continue.

Hey, when you're making banana bread for the other neighbors, don't forget Mr. Grumpy Pants. That's how I'll refer to him. And that's a true believer to see that it's about relationship. When we talk about spiritual growth, what our walk with God includes walking alongside with others who are having a difficult time, encouraging the timid and the weak learning from others who, you know, can do something better than we can and being humble to learn and to take their advice.

All of these relationships that are kind of our horizontal relationships here on earth can help us grow in our vertical relationship with God. Well, that's a great word picture to put in our hearts and our minds. You share how giving our time and you kind of alluded to that a moment ago, giving of our time is a great gift for people. It's probably the possession that is the most precious. If you are sitting or laying in your deathbed at 85, 90, looking back, time is all of a sudden worth far more than gold or riches.

It's time. And you have a story of a friend attending your father-in-law's funeral that caught your heart. What happened? My father-in-law passed away. He was from a town about two and a half, three hours from me. So I didn't know a lot of people in his town. There were some that I knew, but for the most part, as I stood at the funeral home with my husband and his siblings and his mom who were all grieving, I didn't know many people there. I was just trying to do my thing as a daughter-in-law of the man that was lying in the casket.

And all of a sudden I saw a familiar face walk in and it was my friend Mary. And she was from several hours in two states away and she had taken the time, made sure her three kids were cared for, her husband helped with this too. And she had making the time to drive all the way there to be with me when she could have easily just sent a card. And it's great to send a card, to have a phone call of that, but to really carve out an entire day to just come there and give me a hug and say, I know you're going to miss him too. Because I was really close to him. It meant something to me. It was just so out of the ordinary because I was trying to be strong for my family. I saw grieving, my extended family on my husband's side, but I was grieving too because boy, I'm going to miss his grilled chicken. He was great at grilling out chicken.

He was great at making me feel like I was one of his daughters, even though I was just his daughter-in-law. And seeing her face and knowing how much time that cost her and organizational skills to get it all planned out and to lose a whole day of her life just to come and drive. It was about probably six or seven hour round trip for her to do that. But it meant a lot. It did.

Yeah, it did. Sometimes I think we underestimate the impact of presence might mean to somebody. So we say, well, it won't be that they won't miss us. I mean, who are we to them?

We're not family. How do you override that rationalization to do the right thing? I just think back to in my life, the people that have actually physically paused their life to do something for me rather than just send a card or a gift card.

I mean, those things are great, but they're kind of easy to do. But the things that mean the most to me is when somebody really takes time to think through either some clever gift they're giving me for my birthday or just a way to come and be present with me. And when I am going through something, I think back to how much that meant to me. And it kind of snaps my brain into attention to realize that's going to mean that much more to this person I'm trying to reach out to. Don't take the easy way out all the time and just give the phone call or the text message. Sometimes I need to put my own agenda on hold to go and spend time with that person because I'm remembering how much it meant to me when someone did that to me. Well, apart from praying, Karen, how can we prioritize maybe some first steps to really living out this? And I love the principle that your mom helped you start to develop here, which is don't just think about somebody that needs something, do something for that person. But I'm busy.

I got so much going on and I know so many people. How do I get to a point of saying there's the difference maker for that person? That's where I start. I do think it starts with praying that God will tap you on the heart when there's someone you're supposed to notice. So you pray that, then you've got to record it well. You've got to write down your friends having medical tests next week or so-and-so's high maintenance coffee drink or whatever. I call it living alert, just really living alert and not trying to frantically write everything down you see every day, but just knowing when God's saying that person over there, that thing they just said, write it down, remember it. And then asking Him to bring that to your attention later. And sometimes, you know, I was talking about my friend Mary. I call her my freaky friend because my kids say this because sometimes something will happen and I'm just so upset. I'm now throwing myself on my bed and crying for 45 minutes and the phone will ring and it will be Mary. And she will say, I've had you on my heart for the last 45 minutes. What's going on? She's like my freaky friend, but she has asked Jesus, please help me to walk so closely with you that I know when you're tapping me on the heart and saying, so-and-so might be having a bad day.

So just asking Him and He's faithful, He'll do it. It never fails. Now, I guess maybe sometimes I'm a little bit of a freaky friend to people because I just had this happen the other day where I called someone out of the blue I probably hadn't talked to for three years. And I said, I cannot stop thinking about you for the last week. And I found out that her husband had an affair and he's divorcing her. I knew nothing about it.

There was no clues on social media. It's just the Holy Spirit. It's just the Holy Spirit. Doing that little activity of inviting God to tap you on the heart, to make you notice, to help bring people to your mind, and then asking Him also to help you carve out time to do that by not being too overstretched in your schedule and by just taking those little pockets of time. Maybe you're just sitting in the waiting room or something and you think, so-and-so has been on my heart.

I'm going to text them while I'm sitting here. That's like the mustard seed becoming the big tree, right? That little faith impacting someone's life in such a profound way. It doesn't always end in a positive way. You had a story about a neighbor I think nine doors down. What happened in that situation?

What did you learn from it? Mm-hmm. I had moved into a new neighborhood. My husband and I were trying to get to know some of the neighbors. And there was one woman who I saw often outside either watering her flowers or rolling her trash can to the curb.

And I kept feeling like when I was on my walk, you know, with my Jesus music blaring in my iPod in my earphones, I kept feeling like God was saying, hey, you should stop and get to know her. But I had stuff to do. I'm busy. I got kids. I just needed to get going.

And I probably ignored that nudge a half a dozen times or more. And then one day I was in town getting groceries or something. And I came back to my neighborhood and I saw that there were sirens and a fire engine. And at first I panicked because my 12-year-old was home alone. And I thought, uh-oh, what did he burn? He probably burned the house down. That's a good mom response.

Yeah. But when I got in the neighborhood, I saw that it was at this neighbor's nine doors down. And I thought, well, maybe there'd been like a false alarm because I didn't see any flames coming or anything. Well, I realized just a few hours later when another neighbor called me to tell me what happened, that she had taken her own life.

She had put the garage door down, turned the car on and sat in the car, decided life wasn't worth living anymore. And I can't beat myself up for that and think, oh, if I'd only stopped, I could have saved her from killing herself. But it did make me think, you know, what if?

Like, what if? Because we were starting a neighborhood Bible study at that time and I could have invited her. I could have tried to introduce her to God. And it's awful to get to know your neighbor through the tears of her relatives at a memorial service.

And that's how I got to know her, by talking to her children. What a statement. I mean, that's an amazing statement you just made.

Yeah. So pay attention to those nudges. A practical application, which I found very helpful, you called it the necessary people. It's a beautiful way to recognize right in front of you, somebody who's doing something that might need, should get a little recognition from you.

Describe it. Necessary people are those people who help us get life done. They bring us our mail. They make our high maintenance coffee order. They teach our children. They bag our groceries. They do our dry cleaning. They, you know, preach the sermon on Sunday.

They're all necessary to us to help us get our life done. So I like to ask myself, you know, what can I do for those people to show them God's love? You know, the old golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, I'll think, if I were a mail carrier, what would I want done to me? Maybe on a hot day, I might want a nice icy cold glass of lemonade given to me when I bring the mail to somebody on my route. Definitely. And so just these little simple ways that you can thank them for the job they do for you all year long. And I'm not just talking about at Christmas, giving fruitcake to the mail carrier, the teachers or whatever.

Please, please. I'm sorry. Not a fruitcake. You haven't had my fruitcake. You have not had my fruitcake.

I think there's only one and it just gets passed from one household to the next. Do you know what's going to happen? She's going to write down on her phone, Jim wants fruitcake.

Her drop. Jim wants fruitcake. I think a fruitcake in the mouth, but I might give it to you, John. But your family actually did something for one of those necessary people in your life. Mr. Brown, I think his name was, and he was your mailman. Yeah, we actually threw a Mr. Brown day.

Me and all my little kids, we jumped out, we threw confetti. At the mailbox? Yeah, when he came up and we said, surprise, it's Mr. Brown, best mailman in town.

Today is officially Mr. Brown day. And our little kids had gotten like a squirt gun for him to ward off the dogs. And we made him cookies and had lemonade and it was cute. And he walked on his way and I didn't think too much about it.

But you know what? About a week later, I heard the pip, pip, pip, pip of his feet coming up the block. And I said, hello, Mr. Brown, how are you today?

And I'll never forget it. It was a sunny day. He had on sunglasses. He took off his sunglasses. He kind of dropped his head for a minute, shook his head. And then he looked up at me, visibly choked up.

And he said, do you know what? I have been a mailman on this street for 33 years and no one's ever done anything like what your family did for me. Thank you for Mr. Brown day.

And it's not cause our family is all that great. It took us eight years to think of the idea, but he said, you know, people remember me at Christmas, but no one ever stopped their life on a random Tuesday afternoon and said, thank you for faithfully serving our family all year long. Well, Karen, that is a perfect place for us to end today. What a wonderful example of things that you can do to express the love of God in people's lives.

And if we just slow down for a minute, you can see it right in front of you. And I love that admonition that you have given us in your book, listen, love, repeat how to love those around you. And there's no excuses.

You don't want to stand in front of the throne of the Lord and say, well, I've got a couple of excuses why I didn't do that. You took care of Mr. Brown and I think it makes God smile. This has been great. Thanks for being with us.

My pleasure. And that's how we concluded our conversation with Karen Eamon on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And we'd certainly recommend that you follow up on this important topic by getting Karen's book. We'll send you a copy when you make a donation of any amount to Focus on the Family today. Make a monthly pledge if you can or a one-time gift and we'll send the book to you. That's our way of saying thank you for joining us to help produce programs like this one and provide resources like our counseling team and so much more. Your generosity is the fuel we need to strengthen and support hundreds of thousands of couples who contact us for marital help each year. Donate today and request your copy of the book, listen, love, repeat when you call 800 the letter A and the word family.

That's 800-232-6459 or check the show notes for all the details. Coming up next time, a powerful message from Gary Thomas about godly pleasure. We are suspicious of pleasure at best. We think pleasure is the problem, that the most godliest will be able to resist pleasure the most.

But what if pleasure is part of God's solution for us to live lives of worship? On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. I'll see you next time.