Listening and Doing

James 1:19-25 says; Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for men's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you. which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like the a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does.
The first part of this verse says so much. When Jesus spoke, people listened. Even those who didn't like Him or agree with Him listened. So how do we listen in a Godly manner? How do we filter out verbal waste? How do we store beneficial information? When it comes to listening in a Godly manner, I choose to listen to my heart. I believe God speaks to our hearts and then wants us to process things to our heads. For example: I knew in my heart that I should help the guy that was sitting on the side of the road with a broken down car, but my head told me that if I did, I would be late to that meeting. We all make heart filled choices everyday.
Slow to speak. What does that mean? Should I speak slowly so that people can understand me. Yeah, maybe. But I was thinking more along the lines of processing the given information. Everything that you hear is either a form of advice, an explanation or definition, a rumor or a lie, or gossip. How we choose to process it is crucial. When my wife and I get into an argument, and she points something out about me that feels like it might have some truth to it, I always have to process it before I speak out. I have to check myself or self evaluate. If I choose to blow it off and it was true, then I am just living a lie. I've already lost the argument and now I'm just making false accusations to defend myself. And it's not about winning or losing. It's about arguing constructively and getting through the matter at hand. It's about being slow to speak and not letting dumb words fly off of my tongue. This ties in with being slow to anger as well. In the verse it states that: men's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. When is the last time anything truly good has happened out of anger? In my 39 years of life, nothing. If you are so angry that you can't even think straight, then something tells me you're definitely not going to be able to feel what your heart has to say. At that point, it's time to step back and cease fire. I have seen a lot of fist fights in my life and the angry man has always come out of it with a loss. Mostly because of lack of focus and concentration. He was out of control whereas his calm headed opponent was focused and able to strike more efficiently. I always tell my son (who has a lot of mood swings) that anger is a feeling that God gave us. There is passion in anger, and if we learn how to harness that energy, we can use it to our advantage. He is a soccer player and he hates to lose. He has come a long way with transforming is anger into passion filled energy to play the sport that he loves. I think that he will have a righteous life that God desires for him if he can continue to learn how to process his anger on and off of the field.
I wanted to touch on gossip real quick because I fell victim to this myself this past Tuesday. I was with my men's group and we were wrapping up for the evening with some thoughts on how we can serve our community. One of the guys in my group has been offering the idea of doing some demo work for our student ministries. I have had some differences with the pastor that heads up that ministry in the past and I have heard a lot of rumors about his status with the church. Mind you, all of these rumors are false, but still, I have been storing this information for a while now and somehow it came out that evening. I was spreading gossip. I simply threw it all out on that table for the men of the group to hear. Some of the guys were floored by this. They had no idea where it came from. They hadn't even heard any rumors until that point. My point is, I let my anger or hurt feelings get the best of me and I let that crap roll out of my mouth probably just to get back at him. I immediately felt convicted by God and condemned by the enemy. My heart told me that I had to apologize to everybody at that table and at the church for my false words. In my head, I could hear satan telling me that it was o.k. That I wasn't worthy of God's love anyway, so why not spread lies. I have come clean with everybody since that evening except with the children's pastor. I am still struggling with the "how to" on that one.