Monthly Archives: January 2013

Do you listen well?

THERE ARE AT least three levels of listening:

1. No listening or nonlistening: This person has no awareness of the need to listen or to use a set of skills related to listening. He is not hearing impaired, so he believes he is a listener.

2. Focused listening: This listener is the type you do in polite conversation. The listener looks at the speaker with interest and doesn’t interrupt him. Most people prefer to speak, so focused listening is greatly valued and appreciated.

3. Active listening: This type of listener will paraphrase or summarize what the other is speaking and it helps the speaker feel more deeply connected. This type of listening fosters trust, communicates caring, and invites open dialogue. Also it can clarify miscommunication and resolve conflict. (Dallas and Nancy Demmitt)

“So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” James 1:19

Mike Benson

Thoughts on a new year

Instead of making hollow spiritual goals for the New Year, why not actually do something about them? Actions speak louder than words and God is waiting for us to get off our comfy chairs.

“And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11, NKJV).

We must change dramatically if we will see pronounced change in the New Year.

* We recline and whine and that the church is not growing.

* We give less and grouse that the church is broke.

* We attend less and complain about the numbers.

* We stop inviting people and complain that no one is evangelizing.

* We don’t study our Bibles and scream about Biblical ignorance.

In this New Year, let us finally throw off the shackles and work to make this the best year for our congregation. We must stop whining, grousing, complaining, blaming and screaming and put our hands in the dirt and work.

We must repent that we have talked more than we have served the Lord. The transformation process has stopped and we must return to the Lord (Romans 12:1-2).

How can we accomplish all of this? We can invest in prayer in 2013 and become stronger and more devoted in the process.

When we make prayer a priority, we give God the keys and allow him to lead. As a result, our entire worldview changes from fleshly to spiritual. We see souls as priorities and we grow smaller as God grows larger in our hearts.

Prayer connects us with God and we give all of our lives to him. How can we do that and not be changed?

Richard Mansel @ www.forthright.net

Welcome to 2013

What have you chosen to do on your last day of 2012? Spend the time with family members? Head to the beach or the mountains? Take a cruise in the Caribbean? Or maybe keep a regular schedule just as you have all year?

Whatever you chose to do, the day will never return to you again. Whether you end the day and the year well or badly will be a permanent brick in the edifice of your life.

Many of us place special importance on first and last things. Often, that is needed. At other times, people consider all days equal. Yesterday, a brother was concerned that my wife and I would be spending New Year’s Eve alone. We were quite happy with the prospect.

Special or not, each day has its own value, its own opportunity. And a new year does provide us moment to reflect, to ponder how to improve, to consider what we might do to be more effective, more efficient, more righteous in the will of God.

Though I quit staying up late to welcome the new year, I still review and tweak my personal mission statement, choose a Bible verse for the year, and write down a short prayer as well.

The mission statement says that “I am an evangelist. I teach people the word of God, so that they may know what God has done in their behalf and what they must do. I do this in person, in print and through the Internet.”

I have some details in there about what God has done and what people must do, but we’ll not go into those.

This and the other yearly items are posted in a software I use every day for lists, ideas, information, and my journal. So I see them almost every day, to remind me.

I put all this into English and Portuguese, but here are the verse and prayer in the former language.

My verse for 2013 is Romans 1.9: “I serve [God] with all my heart by spreading the Good News about his Son” (NLT).

The prayer is also a Bible verse, from 2 Thessalonians 3.1: “that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly, and be honored everywhere it goes, …” (NLT).

I’m hammering out some new ministry principles, not that there will be any major turns in my work, but each year brings new challenges that require some forethought. They’re not ready to roll out yet. Soon

These days I do fewer resolutions, since my life is pretty well set. I’m working on shoring up, and growing in, the faith and learning how to be more effective in the Lord’s mission.

Those are goals that I want in front of me on the last day of the year, on the first day of 2013, and every day. How about you?

—J. Randal Matheny @ www.forthright.net