{"id":471,"date":"2018-09-06T10:25:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/are-we-listening-we\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:15:08","slug":"are-we-listening-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"Are We Listening Well?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hanging out with my grandchildren always gives me inspiration for my daily blog. When I watched \u201cThe Lego Movie\u201d with my youngest grandson, I heard Emmett say, “I think I got it, but just in case, tell me the whole thing again. I wasn’t listening.” <\/p>\n

I think I\u2019m too often like Emmett. Listening well hasn\u2019t always been my strong point. I had (and still do have at times) the tendency to be thinking of a response to someone speaking to me instead of \u201clistening well\u201d to them. There were times when I even cut someone off because I thought I needed to insert my experience into the conversation before they even finished sharing their story with me. Oh my goodness. I apologize to those of you who were the recipients of my not \u201clistening well\u201d. <\/p>\n

I had a beloved pastor who always made me (and others) feel like I was the only one in the room when we talked. His eyes were on me. He didn\u2019t let others distract him from listening to me. He listened well. <\/p>\n

Have you ever had something really important to say to someone but you saw them texting, knowing full well, you didn\u2019t have their undivided attention and weren\u2019t \u201clistening well\u201d to you? Or maybe someone was trying to talk to you and at the same time you were texting, but you said: “I’m listening….go ahead!” In reality, we weren’t listening WELL at all.<\/p>\n

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Imagine what God must feel like when He\u2019s sending us messages all the time and we\u2019re not listening well to His voice. We\u2019re distracted or preoccupied or just maybe, we don\u2019t even want to listen. You know how our children have selective hearing? You can call out their name over and over and they don\u2019t respond, but if you say something like \u201cIce Cream\u201d, they\u2019ll come running. Just like our kids, we, too, have selective hearing. We listen to what we love. God is communicating with us all the time. He wants us as we want our kids, to “listen well”.<\/p>\n

So how do we listen well? We listen well by guarding our hearts. It’s easy to be sidetracked, especially when we’re so busy. We’re running here and there, taking care of business and trying to figure out how to do this or that. God is always speaking to us, but our hearts are distracted as we are being controlled by busyness, stress, and anxiety. How many times did we miss a solution or answer to our prayers because we weren’t listening well? We must guard our hearts so that when He speaks….we’re tuned in to His frequency and can hear Him loud and clear. <\/p>\n

Isn’t it time we become respectful of others and we pay attention and \u201clisten well\u201d to them? And, above all, isn\u2019t listening well for God\u2019s voice a sure way to make right decisions? He holds the answers to everything we need to live a victorious life, so why would we allow anything to come between our ears AND His voice? Isn’t it time for us to start LISTENING WELL?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanging out with my grandchildren always gives me inspiration for my daily blog. When I watched \u201cThe Lego Movie\u201d with my youngest grandson, I heard Emmett say, “I think I got it, but just in case, tell me the whole thing again. I wasn’t listening.” I think I\u2019m too often like Emmett. Listening well hasn\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1669,1670,1496,1671,1672,1673,1674,1675,1676,1677,1678,1104],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-distract","tag-god-is-speaking","tag-gods-voice","tag-guarding-our-hearts","tag-i-wasnt-listening","tag-listening","tag-listening-well","tag-preoccupied","tag-selective-hearing","tag-texting","tag-the-lego-movie","tag-undivided-attention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8546,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/8546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}