Preaching with Our Ears // Living Life as an Ambassador of Christ, Pt 8

Have you ever met someone and … all they do is talk. They never seem to stop long enough to listen – only to figure out what they’re going to say next. They’re … well, boring.  Sometimes I think though when we’re telling others about Jesus, we think we have to be like that – all talk.  If only we could learn to preach with our ears.

It never, never, ever, ever ceases to amaze me how differently two people can see the same thing. We can be in the same situation or experience or read the same words on a page or hear the same thing on the radio or watch the same thing on television and react to it, perceive it, respond to it, be impacted by it in totally, totally different ways.

A while ago now I wrote a book about our different God given personality types called My Personality GPS and as part of that I interviewed one person from each of the personality types. Perhaps you heard some of those interviews on air a while back.

Now here's the thing, I asked each of these people exactly the same questions and I was utterly blown away by the differences in their answers. They saw the world so differently. And on top of our personality types there's generation, there's culture, there's up bringing, there's life experiences.

All of those things make us who we are and all of those things forms the lens, if you will, through which we perceive the world. Now we kind of know that I guess but a lot of the time we don't live and behave as though we know that. Our default position is, if you like, is that everyone sees the world the same way as we do. But that's just not true.

So if we want to communicate something to someone then one of the things we need to do is to understand how they see the world. In a sense we need to learn to speak with our ears.

Over the last few weeks on the program we've been chatting about what it means to be an ambassador of Christ. To live our lives, if we believe in Jesus, as one of His ambassadors. If you've been with us you'll have heard me read this particular verse more than once or twice. It's by the Apostle Paul, he said in writing to his dear friends at a Church in Corinth way back in the 1st century.

The letter is 2 Corinthians in the New Testament, chapter 5, verse 20. Paul says:

We are ambassadors for Christ since God is making His appeal through us. We entreat you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

Now one of the things that strikes me here is how strong the differences are across cultures. We've had a man recently join our team here at Christianityworks, his name is Gregory. Now you may not have noticed but we Australians are fairly direct in the way we speak.

Gregory's an American and American's on the other hand are less so. We often joke about it. Gregory will ask where the bathroom is where as I'll ask where the toilet is. We Australians are much more direct. But even more than that, Gregory grew up, spent many of his childhood years in Japan.

And so he has a lot of the Japanese culture on the inside too. A culture that is very much about politeness and face. And even though we've known each other for a long time, now that we work together every day we've both been learning that we're quite different in the way we behave.

When I ask him what he thinks I want him to actually tell me what he thinks. If he thinks I'm off with the pixies on some issue I actually want him to tell me so, so I can fix it. Forget hierarchy, I just want his direct honest input 'cause that's how we'll get results, that's how we Australians work.

He, on the other hand, can find that a bit confronting because that's not the cultural background that he's come from. That's just one example but it's a good one. Imagine if I, as direct and as blunt as I can be, were sent as Australia's ambassador to the US or to Japan, well frankly, I'd have to learn about culture before I could communicate effectively on a diplomatic level in those countries.

I'd have to find different ways of saying the things I want to say. I'd have to listen carefully to what their diplomats were saying to make sure I actually hear what they mean.

You know something, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with people around us is exactly the same. I, after 15 years of walking with Christ, have a whole different perspective on success, on joy, on happiness, on sin, on pain and all sorts of things from someone who doesn't have that relationship with Jesus.

Why would I ever imagine I could talk to them as though they had the same perspective as me? You know for a long, long time in my life I was not ready. I was just not ready for anyone to tell me about Jesus. Get lost. I couldn't stand those God botherers.

I had a totally different perspective to theirs. I just knew life was about making lots of money, being recognised and successful in my field. I just knew that I would find my pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I had, back then, a whole bunch of misconceptions about life and where I wanted to head and where I wanted to be and what would make me happy and I didn't need anyone to preach at me.

What I needed was someone to listen to me. What I needed was someone to understand me and help me so I could understand myself. I needed someone to preach to me more with their ears than with their mouth if that makes sense.

An ambassador from one country who's about to be sent to another country has to learn about the culture and the language and the issues and the aspirations and the concerns of the people in the country to which he or she is being sent. Someone who lives in one country and is going to be a missionary in another country, well we have to do exactly the same.

I believe the most important asset an ambassador can have are his ears and eyes. To observe, to perceive, to listen to understand.

Jesus, He grew up in the Hebrew culture of the first century Israel. He attended school. He knew how to speak. And He spent a lot of time listening. He spent a lot of time eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. He spent time living with His Disciples.

I remember when I was working in a retail buying group, quite some years ago now, the Chairman of our board was a man called Stan Brown. He owned a menswear store in Sydney. I remember him saying that a shop attendant who walks up to a customer in a store and opens up with, 'Can I help you?' Well he'd say it's like asking someone to marry you on the first date.

First, he said, you need to find out who they are, why they're here, what their taste is, what they're looking for. First you have to find that point of connection. He had a lot of wisdom there. And as I look at the people who God brought to me, the ambassadors whom He sent in my direction when I didn't want to hear.

What I realise now is they preached for the most part with their ears. They listened, they understood, they laughed, they cried with me and once they understood, once I knew they understood then I was able to relax. Then I let them into my thoughts and into my heart and into my life. Then they had the opportunity to show me who this Jesus really was.

The stock in trade of an ambassador is diplomacy. It's about trust and communication and understanding and if you and I, if we're going to be ambassadors of Christ then that's something I believe we're going to have to learn. When I take the time to get to know you and understand you, whether or not I agree with you, I have just built a bridge into your life that honours you.

When you do the same for me you've just built a bridge into my life that honours me. And when we feel understood we feel secure and we experience trust. And this is something that travels in both directions. It's not rocket science, that is the bridge that one day Jesus will walk across.

Trust me, that's the bridge. It's the bridge of trust and relationship and love and care that Jesus walks across time and time again. And it all comes, not so much from preaching with our mouths but preaching with our ears. Go figure.