Three Keys to Good Relationship Outcomes

part one

Scripture Reading: James 1:19

Knowing this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

It is always a good thing to consider what your desired outcome is. What is it you want to produce from your life and in your relationships? In the context of this verse, do you want to see the righteousness of God in your relationships?

James is clear. Your wrath will not have the fruit of God’s righteousness.

What can we do to have better relationship outcomes?

There are three things we can learn to do to help us in this area. First, be quick to hear. Listening is an art. Hearing isn’t just about the physics of sound waves passing into our ear canals and doing all the amazing things they do in there to produce signals to our brains that we can understand as words and sentences that have meaning attached to them. Listening also involves attention, thought, and empathy. What James is talking about is listening to understand.

Communication is tricky. We say stuff and, well, it doesn't always come out the way we intend, or we can’t find the right words or way to communicate what we have in mind. It gets even more complicated because on the other side of that is the person who is listening to us. Even if we say what we mean perfectly, they may not have the ability to understand what we mean, or they may not have the mental focus that makes it possible to understand.

When communication breaks down, misunderstandings happen. We can’t control all the possible ways communication can go awry, but we can control parts of it. And the one thing we can control is our listening. We can make it our aim to always be quick to hear. That is, when someone is speaking to us we can make sure we are paying attention to what they are saying. We can listen to understand. That means we will ask clarifying questions, we will pay attention, not just to the words that are spoken, but to the tone in which they are spoken and to the intent behind them. To be “quick to hear” is to be the kind of person whose highest aim in communication is to understand, not to be understood.

Being quick to hear is a good start. Tomorrow we will look at “slow to speak.”