One-sided Conversations

 

One-sided conversations: we don’t usually find them pleasant unless we’re the ones doing all the talking. And for you non-talkers, they must be agony to endure.

While I’m confident God loves it when we come to Him chattering with excitement, or when we come to Him asking for help with a problem, I think He’s equally if not more excited when He sees us listening for His voice.

So, this post may be mostly for all the people out there that are members of the Chatty Club; those of us who talk more than we listen. I prefer to call myself loquacious instead of verbose, it just sounds sexier and more flattering. We’re a pretty big club. You’ve probably run into more of us than you thought you would.

We sometimes interrupt what you’re saying to get in our two cents. We sometimes let our minds wander while you’re talking so we’re prepared with something when it’s our turn, if you have a chance to interject at all. Yes, we can be incredibly rude. For that, I apologize in the pithiest way possible: Sorry.

We don’t mean to do it. We wish we could stop ourselves, and sometimes we can – till we hear our own voice again and realize, “Oops – no, I didn’t shut up yet”.

We need to quiet our mind long enough to adopt some method of listening.

Some suggestions include writing out all that’s on our mind first thing in the morning; a “morning dump” if you will.

Perhaps we could wait until evening for important conversations, because, surely by then we’ll be all talked out. (Ha! Can that even happen?)

Snap that rubberband on our wrist every time we hear our own voice?

Ah, we need a sidekick who can motion to us to shut-up when we’ve droned on for too long! Or someone who will pull us aside repeatedly to remind us that yes, we’re talking too much again.

Whether we like it or not, we chase away friendships (or potential friendships) because people will turn and walk the other way when they see us coming.

We can lose out on a lot of valuable information when we’re the one doing all the talking. Believe it or not, the other people in the conversation have valuable input, too! Maybe even more worthy of being spoken than what we’re spouting off about.

Listening. It’s not a hard concept. Some of us just seem genetically predisposed to find it difficult to process into something we routinely do.

I’m no psychologist, but I’d venture to guess that our constant chatter is attempting to fill some need in our lives.

Maybe as a child we were told that ‘children should be seen and not heard’, so now we’re making up for lost time.

All of that rambling to say ---- we need to practice listening. To become good at anything, it usually requires practice. This is no different. Even when talking with our heavenly Father.

Practice listening. God can work with a good listener.

The following verses bring up anger, too. We’ll get to that at another time.

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak [and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires].” – James 1:19-20 NIV

Or – check out the wordier, more poetic version in the Message Bible: “Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, [and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger].”  – James 1:19-20 MSG