A Word from Bob: You’re reading Part 8 in my blog mini-series on Half Biblical Ministry to the Suffering. The series was prompted by a yet-to-be-published work in the biblical counseling field that highlighted truth-telling for people who are suffering, but de-emphasized relationship building with those who are suffering. Based upon my biblical study and my study of the history of how the church has engaged with suffering brothers and sisters, it is my conviction that truth-telling and relationship-building must be combined for any counseling that desires to be considered comprehensively biblical. Here are titles/links to my first 7 posts:
- Half Biblical Ministry to the Suffering
- Counseling Without Loving Compassion
- Mingling Our Sufferings and Sorrows
- Job’s Miserable Counselors: How Not to Counsel
- Climbing in the Casket: Rich Soul Empathy
- 5 Marks of Compassionate Biblical Counseling
- 4 Christlike Characteristics of a Biblical Comforter
The Wisdom of Listening
At times the modern biblical counseling movement has almost conveyed the message that “listening” is somehow “secular.” We’ve conveyed the message that you are only truly doing biblical counseling when you are talking about the Bible.
However, the Bible itself teaches us that “to answer before listening—that is folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). Biblical counseling is not only “gospel conversations.” It also involves “gospel listening.” In fact, we can’t effectively or wisely engage in gospel conversations without gospel listening. Before we speak words of comfort or words of confrontation, we must listen redemptively.
Hearing Life Redemptively: Examples from Black Church History
Gospel listening—biblical, theological, relational listening—is the bridge between joining people by caring like Christ and encouraging people to invite Christ into their journey. Without wise listening, our spiritual conversations and scriptural explorations become preaching at the crowd.
With wise listening, we engage in the personal ministry of the Word—relating Christ’s gospel of grace relevantly and richly to the specific person and their particular situation and unique story.
In Climbing in the Casket: Rich Soul Empathy, we witnessed the power of listening as modeled by Octavia Albert who listened for hours to Charlotte Brooks telling of her sad life of bondage. Such sustaining listening is a constant theme in the history of African American soul care.
Solomon Northrup (his life was the basis of the movie 12 Years a Slave) had lived free for thirty-three years until he was kidnapped and enslaved for a dozen years in Louisiana. When he was first stolen, he spent two weeks in a slave pen where he met an enslaved woman named Eliza, her daughter Emmy, and her son Randall. His account of their interactions offers insight into the need for hearing one another’s story. His summary of their mutual spiritual friendship captures well the nature of spiritual listening in suffering.
“We were thus learning the history of each other’s wretchedness.”
They participated in “Spiritual Friendship 101” by practicing the art of story sharing and story listening.
What Solomon and Eliza shared one-to-one, the black church also practiced communally. Pastor Peter Randolph describes the “invisible institution”—the secret worship services held by the slaves, often assembling in the swamps, out of reach of the patrols. Randolph outlines the initial component of those worship services:
“They first ask each other how they feel, the state of their minds, etc.”
Given their hardships and hard times, it is not surprising that African American Christians began their worship services with lengthy spiritual conversations where they listened to one another’s feelings and thoughts. They cared enough to seek to understand each other’s emotional life and mental state. This mutual story-listening was a natural part of every worship service.
Hearing Life Redemptively: Christ As Our Example
What we learn from black church history about how to care like Christ, we learn also from Christ himself. In John 2, John places a narrative marker just before Christ’s encounters with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.
“He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man” (John 2:25).
Jesus knew the scriptural, universal nature of human nature. And he used that knowledge as he also listened to and tuned into the unique nature of individuals. Jesus remained attuned to two stories simultaneously: God’s universal story and the individual’s unique story.
In John 3 and 4, Jesus could not have encountered two people more different from each other than the Jewish, male, religious leader Nicodemus and the Samaritan, female, irreligious woman at the well. His approach to ministering to them was idiosyncratic—uniquely fitting the gospel need they each had. Jesus listened to their souls, understood their individual stories, and personally applied the gospel remedy to their hearts.
He did so by listening to their “cues.” Nicodemus talked about God, but Jesus heard his need to know God by being born again. The Samaritan woman talked about physical water, but Jesus heard her need to know God by drinking from the spring of living water. She spoke at length about her earthly needs without reference to God, when in fact her words cried out for God the entire time. Jesus knew that her heart, like all hearts, craved God even when she suppressed and misdirected her thirst.
We who have the greatest message in the world—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—ought to be the most compelling communicators. But we fail to communicate the gospel message when we fail to listen carefully and theologically.
Every physician knows that attentive listening is a powerful requisite for healing, without which there is no diagnosis, and without a diagnosis there can be no personalized application of the remedy. Jesus—the Great Physician—understood this when he listened to Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman and with keen attention diagnosed their true need and prescribed the gospel remedy. His ministry helps us to define our ministry of gospel listening.
Attuned gospel listening tunes our ears to God’s redemptive story so that we hear our counselee’s story with theologically-informed ears and compassionate hearts.
The Rest of the Story
In our next post, we’ll listen to 5 biblical principles about listening.
More of the Story
Today’s principles from God’s Word come from my book, Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ.
Join the Conversation
In black church history, one of the primary and regular aspects of their worship services was listening to one another share about how they feel and their state of mind—emotions and beliefs, emotional health and mental health. How would our church services, our church relationships, and our Christian lives be different if we followed their model?
