Listening Without Agreeing

Listening without Agreeing

I want your will to be done, not mine.

I’ve noticed that my daughters seem to get the most upset when they think I’m not listening. In response, they’ll repeat their statement over and over again until I finally say, “I heard you!”

It’s not so much that I’m not listening; it’s that they’ve confused “listening” with “agreeing.” My seven-year-old daughter Noelle explained it to me this way: “Mom, when you listen to the teacher, you do what she says. So you’re not listening!” In other words, because I wasn’t doing what she wanted me to do, she assumed I hadn’t heard her—when really, I just didn’t agree that she needed to stay up later than her usual bedtime because someone else’s parents let them go to bed later in the evening. I heard her loud and clear, but because we had different perspectives, we disagreed on the best way to proceed.

Although this may sound like a childlike trait, I’ve seen this happen in friendship, too. Just the other day, I told my husband about a challenge I was having with friends of mine about coming to a consensus on a decision.

“Why don’t you tell them that’s how you feel about it?” he asked me.

“I did!” I said. “I just don’t feel like they’re listening!” If I’m honest with myself, however, I can recognize that my friends were listening—they just didn’t agree with my conclusion.

We may also experience this frustration in our friendship with God. How often does this listening-without-agreeing happen in our prayers to Jesus? As our friend who sticks closer than a brother, he understands us intimately. But it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we pray and something doesn’t go the way we’d like or we don’t hear the answer we expect (or any answer at all, for that matter), he must not be listening. But it may simply mean that our heavenly Father views our circumstances in a very different light than we do. How powerful it is when we consider the big picture—unseen to us, but visible to God—and shift our mindset, recognizing that he can listen without agreeing! Doing so can go a long way to deepening or restoring our trust in him.

— Kristin

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

When a friend or family member seems to be listening without agreeing, try to see the issue from their point of view.