Healthy Communications In The Household
Introduction
We live in a time and age where different forms of communication are at the heart of everything we do. Daily we come into contact or are exposed to different forms of communication, which are designed to keep us informed, and in touch with the world and all the people who are important to us. We have digital communication, wireless communication, satellite communication, and Tele communication to name a few. We have the ability to place an embedded reporter with a military unit with a PHONEVIDIOCAMTRANSMITCIEVER WITH A BUILTIN COMPASS AND DECODING BAR.
However, we are still trying to develop a communication system that promotes healthy communication in the household.
When we are faced with poor communications in the home, we are faced with a tremendous challenges in the way we can express our love, concerns, and expectations to love ones and their ability to express themselves to us. This challenge is difficult at time that some us do not even take up that challenge. What can we do to improve the way we communicate?
I believe the way to have healthy communication in the household … is to learn to listen to another heartbeat, speak the truth in love, and honor one another. (Big Idea)
I believe that there are principles in the Bible; that when we apply them to the way we listen, to the way we speak to each other and the way we act towards each other will lead us to having healthy communications in our homes.
Lets begin with the way we listen.
Do you think that if you worked at learning to listen to others in our household in a new way, in a way supported by the word of God that we would begin to see better health in the communication that takes place in our homes?
Learn to Listen
We all say we know how to listen;
We have all had conversations with others in which we really do not listen to what is being said, we are just waiting for our turn to talk.
Many of us are familiar with standard listening procedures such as; “Help me to understand what you mean by that”. Or “ So what I hear you saying” or the most commonly used phrase by teenagers to clarify parental communications “HAH”
When I talk about learning to listen, I am speaking of developing a method of listening that will help us to hear the other person’s heart in the words they are speaking.
Conditioning our listening to the point where we hear though the words and hear the wonderment coming from our young son as he speaks of his day at school.
Training our Listening so we can hear the joy carried in our daughter’s words as she shares with us of her making the soccer team.
Listening and feeling the frustration in the words of a husband or wife after a long week in the market place, or the pain of a hurting sibling who shares with us for the first time in years.
However this type of listening involves much more than waiting our turn. In involves putting the other person first. Putting ourselves and our agendas aside, reaching with all that we are to grasp and hear the other person’s heart beat in the words they speak.
For many of us this is a difficult thing to do. We are not accustom to putting others first. We live in a society that demands us to promote ourselves or be over looked. We live in a world where we have to look out for number one, because if we do not nobody else will. In a world that has us thinking about ourselves, talking about ourselves and listening to ourselves before we do anything else. But if we follow the model the world has given us we get the results we see all around us Poor communication with others in general and particularly in our homes.
We don’t have to stay there, God, through the Apostle Paul has given us a practice of behavior, which I believe when applied to our listening habits, would greatly increase our ability to hear the hearts of others as they speak to us.
We find this practice in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Turn with me to Ephesians 4
Paul here is writing to believers and giving instruction how believers are to act towards other believers. It is my beliefs that if we apply these traits to our listening skills we will truly learn to listen.
Ephesians 4:1b, 2 … walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love,
Lets look closely at this passage and think of it in terms of listening.
Listen with all humility, that is listen in a state of humbleness, in a state of submission. Listen by bringing your self down from a state of thinking of yourself first, which will allow you to regard the other person as more important than yourself.
Listen in gentleness. We want to listen to the other person in a spirit of calmness and meekness in our actions, in our words and in our thoughts. To listen in gentleness is to listen with the absence of rudeness, anger, and arrogance.
Listen in patience; we could also use the word longsuffering forebaring. In the Greek, the meaning we get for this word is to stand under pressure. We want to stand under the pressure of wanting to let our minds wonder off, Stand under the pressure of wanting to cut the other off to tell our side. Stand under the pressure of not working to hear the heart beat of the other person.
Showing tolerance – Showing open-mindedness when we listen, having an acceptance of the other person as a creation of God, who was made in His image.
Doing all of this in love
That means when we come home from work and ask our children how was school we stop a listen to the answer. In humbleness and gentleness, we lower ourselves to hear what their heart is saying.
We practice this type of listening as we listen to our spouse tell us of their day at the office. Thinking of them first, this may mean we turn the TV off when listening even if the latest scores are just to come on.
Learning to listen by applying this passage to our listening habits is a wonderful start to developing healthy communication in our household.
With listening comes talking, Speaking to each other.
? Just as we can draw on the Bible to guide our listening, Don’t you think we can draw on the Bible to also give us a passage that we could use to help us to develop a healthy communication in our household as we respond to one another ?
I believe the Bible gives us a practice of behavior that would help us to respond by learning to speak the truth in love.
Learn to speak the truth in love
Speaking the truth in love is also a very difficult thing for us to do.
God again through the pen of the Apostle Paul provides us with a practice of behavior that when applied when speaking to others will help us to truly speak the truth in Love.
We find this passage also in the letter to the Ephesians
Ephesians 4:29
Let no unwholesome word that is let no rotten word,
- No objectionable word,
- No nasty word,
- No vulgar word,
- Any word that would cause sickness
Proceed from your mouth, come out of your mouth, but only such a word
- As is good for edification,
- Good for teaching,
- Good for uplifting,
- Good for encouraging
According to the need of the moment,
- According to that specific situation
- According to the age of the person,
- According to gender of the person
- According to the spiritual maturity of the person
So, that it will give grace,
- It will give kindness,
- It would be a blessing
To those who hear.
I can recall when my sons Shawn and Justin were younger. We were very involved in sports, Particularly Soccer and Baseball. I was the coach for most of there early teams. Now I wasn’t one of those parents who you see on the field yelling and screaming at the children. Nor was I pushing sports into them. However I can’t say I remember really listening to them and their sports excitement until many years later. You see I was the coach. They had to ride home with me after every practice and every game. And in looking back all I could remember is the lesson after the … How they needed to work on this aspect of their game …How they didn’t work, hard that day… We have to push harder. In my mind I was speaking the truth … But was it the truth in love or in frustration.
? Was it truth that they needed to hear at that time? We need to speak the truth in love in a way that will lift the other person up.
Riding home with my sons, I could have spoken to how well they had worked that day. I could have spoken of something else all together. We could have spoken of their day at school or the plans for a vacation. All it would of taken would be for me to Listen to their hearts and respond to them speaking the truth in love where they where at time.
Honor one another
God trough His word has given us two principles of behavior that we can use to improve the way we listen and the way we speak to each other. And when we practice this in our homes we will improve the health of the communication in the household.
Learning to listen and speaking the truth in love are two different form of communication that goes together.
This is not going to be easy. Image a telephone, we have the receiver the part that receives the words and sends them to the little speaker we hear through. The there is the transmitter; this is the part that sends the words we speak out to the other telephone we are connecting with at the time. Now it would be petty difficult to use these two items, the receiver and the transmitter if they where not together in a single unit. So, we have a casing, something that hold these two pieces of machinery together so that we can get the best possible use of the telephone.
At the core of learning listen to another’s heart and speaking, the truth in love is honoring one another.
Philippians 2:3,4; 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
Before Sandra and I moved to Arizona from NYC, I owned a business in the city with my brother Robert. It was a small family business in the Fashion jewelry industry, which my father and his partner Samuel owed before us. Now when it came to that business my mind was always racing, thinking about how we could make the business grow. What type of costumers we wanted to go after, or what was the latest technology we should be getting for the business. It was exciting, it was a challenge, and it was where my agenda for life hung.
I remember one day Robert and I were having a conversation, we had many conversations about the business, but for some reason I remember this one clearly. We were talking where in our office at the front of the shop. The shop was nothing more than a 25 by 100 warehouse shell in an industrial section of Queens NY. We were one block north of the 59th street Bridge one of the major bridges used to get to Manhattan. So there was always traffic right outside our office door with horns blowing, people yelling, and motors racing.
I remember this was a day I thinking of a new way to improve the business. I had an idea, a plan, and a revelation of how to make this a better business, how to increase our efficiency, a way to push forward.
Robert’ response like so many other times was that is not me. I do not want to put in 12-hour days. I do not want to be the biggest and the best. I do not want to work at this 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. That’s you Ed, that’s not me.
I could still feel the fury build up inside me from those words. Yes that is me Robert I thought to myself. And that thought was followed flood of other thoughts that I can recall vividly today.
The thoughts were:
o Yes that is me Robert,
o I am the college gradate,
o I am the one working the long hours,
o I am the one pushing this company into the 21st century.
o Yes, I am the one who wants to make this company bigger and better.
o Yes me Ed Clavell your brother why not you.
Then the words came out--- What are you scared of? Is this all you want out of life? To work in some hole in the wall day in and day out, to the sound of horns blowing, people yelling and motors racing. That’s not me, I want more, and so should you.
I did not listen to Robert in humility or gentleness. Nor did I demonstrate any patience or tolerance for what he was saying.
I knew what was best for him even if he did not know. I had no time nor did I want to hear his side of the story again.
The words I spoke to him were unwholesome, rotten. They did nothing to edify or encourage him according to his needs at the time. But least of all, I did not honor my brother Robert.
When we honor the other person, it is easy to listen for their heartbeat.
o It is easy to humble ourselves as we listen to our young son tell us of the wonderment of his school day - if we are honoring our son.
o It is easier to listen for the joy carried in our daughter’s words as she shares with us of her making the soccer team - when we hold her in honor.
o Listening and feeling the frustration in the words of our spouse after a long week in the market place become much more real if we hear their heartbeat while holding them in honor.
o The pain of a hurting sibling who shares with us for the first time in years is eased a bit for them - because we listen in honor to their plight.
o When we hold someone in honor it is much more difficult to speak to them in a rotten way.
o When we hold someone in honor words of edification and encouragement flow freely from our mouths.
o When we hold someone in honor we give him or her grace, kindness, and we become a blessing to them.
This week starting tonight in the car riding home, think of most recent conversations with the people of your household. Did you hear their heartbeat in the words they spoke to you? Was your reply the truth spoken in love? Where your words the words they really needed to hear at that moment according to their needs? And just as important did you hold them in honor as you spoke to each other? If you answered no to one or all of these questions, then we have work to do. If you answered yes to one or all of these questions, then we also have work to do to get better at with our skills.
My challenge to you is to memorize these the verses. And as you memorize them think of how to apply them in listening for the others heartbeat, speaking the truth in love, and honoring one another.
Let us pray.