The Lord’s First Lesson in Serving is Listening

Usually, ideally, once we’ve begun to establish a relationship with God and we start to see the benefits of that love impact on our lives, the natural progression is to want to start serving to bring this positivity to others.

Now there are visible positions in the church that gain a lot of attention and praise. They can appear to be very desirable because they carry with them an implicit stamp of righteousness for the person simply by virtue of holding that position. Those positions can be a long way off, so where do you start?

Serving at its purest is humble, and often enough, won’t go noticed by anyone. Sometimes you won’t even know what you’ve done and what seeds you’ve planted. Jesus is the best judge of these things, and the best example to follow. How did he do it? Listening first.

More than injecting himself into peoples’ lives, Jesus let his love shine and draw people to him. They came to him with their prayers and questions, and first of all, he listened. Even now, when we approach Jesus in prayer and he looks to serve us, what does he do? He listens.

It is the greatest, and, once you are in touch with your humility, easiest thing to do in service of another. It’s not just a passive silence though, it is an active absorption of the other person’s thoughts and feelings for the sake of connecting and feeling an empathy from which you may be able to act on. There are so many in this world who are poor in means and poor in spirit, and so often the first obstacle is simply to be heard at all. The best way you can introduce the idea of a caring, serving God is to be a reflection of that open ear and heart that first provided comfort to you.

Sometimes this will mean listening to a critique of your beliefs too. Again, be a listener. Really take in their points and respond in a way that is as helpful as possible, even if you find the assertion in some way offensive. Resist the temptation to rely on proclamations of how they lack in learning compared to you or to belittle in any way. It certainly wasn’t Jesus’ way for anyone other than the Pharisees or the disciples, who should have known better anyway.

The end hope is that people learn how to openly, honestly express themselves to you, which is a gateway for them to God. How much more will God listen to them with compassion and love than the humble, yet faithful example you are to them? In a world where people struggle to be heard and prayer goes unanswered or even unspoken because people aren’t confident God is open to listen, the best thing you can perhaps do is be the smaller example of God’s greater ability. You may not ever receive earthly credit, but trust that Jesus looks down and smiles.