Let the Person Speak
Today’s devotional
A question arrives in the middle of a hopeful conversation: who will do the additional work? It can sound like resistance when you are eager to begin. But the words may come from someone willing to help who needs to understand what dependable participation would require. Listening gives that person room to tell you.
James calls believers to readiness in hearing, restraint in speaking, and care with anger. The passage moves toward receiving God's word and acting upon it. Listening is therefore part of a responsive life before God. It asks us to make space between our immediate reaction and the conclusion we are preparing, especially when our words will affect another person's freedom to speak.
Presence includes respect for what we cannot know directly. We can observe actions and ask about consequences without claiming access to another person's motives. A question may reveal strain, confusion, a practical concern, or something we have genuinely missed. Attending carefully does not require agreement with every proposal. It does require that the actual concern, rather than our imagined version of it, receive a response. Sometimes that means arranging a better time and following through on the promise to listen.
Christ's care gives us a reason to receive people as more than roles within our plans. The volunteer, colleague, student, or family member carries an experience we have only partly seen. In today's conversation, ask a question you do not already know how to answer. Summarize what you heard and allow correction. A decision made after that exchange may still be difficult, but it can be grounded in a more truthful understanding of the people who will live with it.
Adapted from Chapter 6: Being Present to People in Never No Way by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice what these words reveal about God and the life before you.
James 1:19-25 · WEBU
19So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger;
20for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.
21Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror;
24for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
Pause and respond
For reflection
Whose concern have I interpreted before allowing them to explain it?
A practice for today
Invite one person to describe a concern in their own words. Listen without preparing your defense, then summarize what you heard and ask whether your summary is fair before discussing a response.
A prayer
Patient Lord, slow the judgments I make about other people. Help me hear the concern actually being offered and receive correction without defensiveness. Give me clear boundaries and dependable follow-through, so the attention I promise becomes care someone can experience. Let your love shape the way I listen. Amen.
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