passion @ uwa

Ok, good, now that I have your attention, let us begin. I will explain about the picture at the end of this post. So, my dear beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, what can you get from today's devotion topic about "How to Be Truly Heard"?

When I first had a brief glance at the topic, I personally thought it was about standing out, as in, to be truly heard if you are in a big crowd but guess I wasn't that correct after all.

So, lately, we had been learning from the examples of Jesus on communication. Why? Because communication is important in relationships. "Trust, watch your heart, and be honest are all good prescription for great communication" says from the book , page 175. Today, we are going to look at how to make an impact on people's lives by strengthening our communication. We will look at how Jesus did it.

3 ways people:
1.giving a touch of compassion
2.asking the right question
3.painting pictures with words

Before I proceed any further, take a moment to think of this. It's kinda like to recap what we are all actually doing in this 40 days of love.

Jesus touched, and healed everyone. Never ever ever ever underestimate the power of a human touch. Now, when I say touch, I don't mean those phony touch. The touch here refers to the touch of genuine kindness as said by Tom Holladay in the book. There are a lot of hurting people in this world that needs love and acceptance and compassion. Nowonder you have all shorts of rubbish going on in this world because people need love, and I mean genuine love. Love is patient, love is kind. Never underestimate the power of a human touch. Someone might be hurting real real bad deep deep down inside in them but they look fine on the outside. They need to be comforted, they need consolation and a simple hug or a rub on the shoulders will help . You never know. You don't even need to say anything. Action speaks louder than words!! Someone failed in their exans. They might say it's alright but giving them a pad on the back might give them encouragement to persevere on.

I can give you a list of examples but I think you get what I mean. I believe all of us had experienced it before, and if you say you haven, it means that you are lying!! Think about your parents. I'm sure they had hugged you a million times when you were younger and don't you feel loved? They are making an impact in your life, they are telling you that they love you. Action speaks louder than words because if you were a baby, being told that I love you won't work much.

Who do you need to give a pad on the back or a hug today to make an impact in their lives? Who?

Second is,

Questions that challenges
These are questions that will stick in our heads long enough to cause us to change and make a 180 degrees turn in our life. The book(The Relationship Principals of Jesus) gave many good examples about Jesus throwing questions to people that caused them to make a change in their lives. A simple example(Mark 10:51) will be when Jesus asked a blind man "What do you want me to do for you?" " I want to see," the blind man, Bartimaeus replied. And guess what, he was healed. That really changed his life. For me, I asked myself this question "when I serve, am I serving God or just trying to impress someone in service?". It keeps my motives right for serving. It keeps myself aligned.

Of course, when you ask a question, always ensure it's a good one, and not some lame question that will just make people feel like wanting to bash you up. I'm talking about questions that will make people think for a while and thus causing them to change for the better. As mentioned in the book, questions are always a better choice to get our point across than raising our voices or giving a statement.

Raising volume = push people away
Statement = tend to confront and put up barriers
Questions = challenge and break down barriers

Now, which one will you choose? hmm....

Third and final one,
Picture to communicate
A picture paints a thousand words!! Agree? Yes, it certainly does. Give you a picture, and you can tell a whole story out of it. Example, show you a picture of me and my girlfriend with a background of Cottesloe beach and I can tell you what we did, this and that for 30 minutes or more....as I said, guys, this is just an example okay? Now, coming back to the third point, Jesus also used pictures to communicate. Not pictures as in paintins, graphs or pie charts. No! but , Jesus used stories, analogies, parables. Each of them containing a lot of lessons. Why? Most of the people back in the days of Jesus are not educated. I'm not saying that they are dumb, but I'm saying that most of them just simple people with simple jobs. The ones with the brains always belong to the teachers of the law, the Pharisees, Rabbi, etc. So, telling them(the simple people) about God's Kingdom, the Trinity, and all the theological and doctrinal stuff straight to their faces will not work. Thus, Jesus put all these messages into parables, short stories so that people will understand better. Simple, easy to remember, and understandable. Perfect!! Message sent, lives impacted!!

Parable of the lost sheep, talks about God's love for us. Story of the good Samaritan, talks about loving your neighbour, and , the list goes on.



So.................
What did we learn from the devotion today?
How to be truly heard?
How to let people hear you ?
How to get yout point across?
How to enhance communication?
How to make an impact on people's lives?

3 ways people:
1.giving a compassionate touch
2.asking the right question
3.painting pictures with words

Like what is said in the book, it may take a little extra effort to do all these, it might be hardwork too, but hey, it's worth it and it can point a life or a relationship in a completely different direction for the better and for God's glory. Amen! Just like the picture of the hamster and the dog, their relationship points in a completely different direction.

So, who do you need to giving a healing touch, phrase the right question and paint a picture with your words today?