Active Listening

Active Listening

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

James 1:19

What if you could press a magic button in your marriage that would instantly create positive and warm emotions about your relationship? What if it would automatically increase your sense of satisfaction, intimacy, and fun? Well, in a sense, you can. Here’s how: when your partner shares good news, you simply need to actively respond. That’s it!

“It isn’t enough just to listen passively,” says Dr. Shelly Gable, who authored a UCLA research report on the subject. When you hear good news from your spouse, you need to be active, give eye contact, and offer a tender touch. Because when you do this, your spouse immediately has tender feelings toward you. They can’t help it. This kind of warm response automatically engenders warmth in return. It’s a practical way of simply saying listen. After all, we all want to be heard and understood.^a

Consider the facts: most people talk at the rate of 120 words per minute. But most spoken material can be comprehended equally well at rates up to 250 words per minute. What does this mean? It means we all have plenty of extra time to be distracted or preoccupied during a typical conversation. That’s what causes us to do just the opposite of what this verse in the first chapter of James urges. Most of us, most of the time, are quick to talk and slow to listen.

Jesus certainly understood the value of taking time to listen. When he encountered the emotionally disturbed demonic men who lived among the tombs in Gadara, the men were shouting at Jesus: “Who are you? Have you also come here to torment us?” Jesus could have turned and walked away. He certainly didn’t deserve to be talked to like that. Jesus would have been justified in leaving the poor men to their own devices. But instead, Jesus listened. He not only heard the words that the men shouted, but he listened for the message of the emotions behind the words. Jesus understood that the men’s outburst was really a cry for help, and he helped (see Matthew 8:28-32). This was listening to more than words; it was listening for the feelings behind them.

Try to convey love today by actively listening to the emotional messages beneath your spouse’s words and reflecting those feelings back so he or she can feel the depth of your connection.

There is hardly ever a complete silence in our souls. God is whispering to us wellnigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God. . . . He is always whispering to us, only . . . we do not always hear, because of the hurry, noise, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on.

—Frederick W. Faber

^a 75