670 Take Time to Listen - John 5:6

Do you consider yourself a good listener? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on our podcast. I'm grateful that you joined us. As this airs, we're actually in day three of the action week on the Marketplace Mission Trip and the topic of the day is listening.

We want to listen to people better. And so I chose for today's verse John 5:6 "when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition. He said to him, do you wish to get well?" This man had been ill for 38 years, it says in the verse before it. Jesus takes time to speak to a sick man at the pool of Bethesda. And he asks him, does he want to get well? And the man's answer was actually kind of deflective. It, it wasn't directly responding to Jesus. He'd been there for 38 years. He'd been trying to get well for 38 years, you must've been very discouraged and very lonely. And Jesus took the time to talk with the man. He didn't take a long time. It doesn't seem, or at least we don't have that recorded because in the next verse, he tells him to take up his pallet and walk, but Jesus took a moment to listen.

And that's what I believe is something that we can do every day. I don't do it very well. And I, you know, I've seen like many times I talk on this podcast about the things that I don't do very well. I tend to be pretty critical. Self-critical anyway. But the point is we want to be better listeners. When we listen to other people, we show appreciation. They become more important than our time and our agenda. And what we want to say, our ability to listen is part of what we should get as a result of being a Christ follower. Jesus died for every person that we meet. There is no such thing as an ordinary human being. We are all extraordinary. We're all a, one of a kind creation. All of us will never be repeated. There will be no duplicates. We are each unique and one of a kind. I'm struck by how easily I can not care at all for other people.

And so remembering to listen and asking God to give me questions. To give me questions to ask, instead of things, to say those are two ideas that I have that help me to listen better. Lord, would you please give me questions today? Lord, would you please help me listen to other people better? Help me think about things to ask so that there will prompt a dialogue.

We all want to talk and therefore you and I can build a relationship with just about anyone if we'll slow down long enough to listen. And that's our job. Our job is to show Jesus to the world. We're practicing that on the Marketplace Mission Trip, if you're with us. And if you're not even as a Christ follower, you're here to show Jesus to the world, how we live matters.

Therefore, today I want to ask you to consider listening to others better, just like Jesus did. He took the extra moment to ask this man a question. I'm not enough of a biblical scholar to understand all of this or to speculate some opinion, except to know that Jesus cared about people. He cared about people, and yet he walked away from that place and we have no record of him healing anyone else.

He went into Bethesda and he asked this one man a question. And he healed him. What do we need to do today to listen to our friends better? Let's ask God to direct us and challenge us in that regard. Our job as Christ followers is to appreciate other people and to serve them so that Jesus becomes visible. And this is our chance.

Every interaction that we have. Let's take a moment today and listen, ask one more question. Tell me more. Because using that kind of an approach will help us to interact with others more and we'll help them to see Jesus living in us. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. Thanks for making a difference with your faith.

Thanks for pursuing your relationship with Jesus so that he can use you better in the world. If you want to join a community of people who are engaged in that effort on a regular basis, checkout https://followerofone.org. But thanks very much.