So I was spending some time practicing and a thought occurred to me. (“Wow Charlie, you developed a thought.” Pretty surprising I know).

We as Christians have serious troubles with listening. This applies to many different contexts but I’m referring specifically to listening to God. 

We spend lots of time doing Christian activities (that is a good thing) and hopefully lots of time in God’s word and prayer. We strive to find God and meet with Him. We try to follow where he is leading because we know that is what He wants and is best for us. 

But how good are we at listening?

Let me explain why this thought came to my mind.  This might seem quite odd to some of you but I’ll do my best to explain. Quite often when someone is trying to learn an instrument they learn “how” to play that instrument. Let’s take the piano as an example. They have an understanding of how it’s suppose to sound and how to make it sound that way. So practice time is spent trying to manipulate the piano to sound the way it’s suppose to. 

Here’s the odd part that most people don’t realize. When most people are playing an instrument they don’t actually listen or hear what they are playing. You may be thinking  ”that sounds funny, how do they not hear it?”. When playing most people can hear when they hit a wrong note or make a big mistake but don’t hear the sound of the instrument and or the musc they are playing. A popular (and excellent) exercise that many people do is to record their playing to hear it back and listen to how it sounded.  That is a great exercise but did you catch that? We have to record ourselves to hear how we sound! Very few people learn how to listen to their instrument as they are playing. They don’t hear the flow and the movement, the expression, the subtle harmonies or how the sound is filling the room. They are too busy learning how to manipulate their instrument instead of hearing what they sound like and adapting to it. Best example I can give is someone absolutely reefing on their instrument.  It’s loud but it sounds like garbage. Every instrument has a volume where it “sings” and we need to learn to listen for that.

In the example of classical pianists that’s what separates a good player from a great one. With the great ones you don’t just hear a lot of notes played really fast, you hear harmonies and textures and emotion. Yes they are playing fast and fancy but it’s about so much more than the notes. 

When I look at people of faith whom I admire and have been great examples to me they have that listening quality. Yes they do lots of things but it’s about so much more than those things and it’s not done with the intent to (for lack of a better word) manipulate  God. They are in a relationship with Him and when they spend time with God it is a two way street. They are listening to and in tune with God.  They aren’t doing it just to get everything right, they are doing so they can hear God, see how He meets with them and fills the spaces in their lives.