By: Kevin Cauley
Our senses receive so much more information than our conscious minds can process. Some of that information is lost; some of it gets buried in our subconscious. Learning, the act of perceiving information to consciously retain it, requires frequent exposure to and repetition of that information. How we learn is just as important as what we learn. Lack of focus builds a fuzzy picture of that which we are studying, but life is granular and detailed. People are also granular and detailed. Building the wrong image of another person or building an incomplete image does not produce the kind of interactions that God wants us to have with others. We must get beyond ourselves to authentically engage in a real relationship.
The only way for someone to reveal their true self to us, though, is to talk to them. God reveals Himself to us by talking to us. Paul wrote, “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:11-12).
We cannot know the mind of another unless that mind is revealed to us through communication. Sometimes, people do not want to do this. We must ask questions. We must listen to what it is that they are concerned about. We must consider that their experiences are not ours. We must refrain from identifying with them and seek to understand them. If there is something that we do not understand, we must ask clarifying questions. Go where the conversation leads, not where you want to take it. This is what it means to truly listen (James 1:19).