PAY ATTENTION

 “Fools have no interest in understanding; they only want to air their own opinions.”  (Proverbs 18:2 NLT)

In the movie Michael, John Travolta plays a wayward angel traveling across the country from the Midwest to New York. While this movie couldn’t be endorsed as presenting a godly representation of angels, it does provide an interesting illustration: While standing in the middle of a group of people, Michael predicts what one young woman will do next.

Another woman standing by him asks how he knew that. Expecting him to profess something about his spiritual powers, the audience is surprised to hear him say, “I pay attention.”

What a great line! I pay attention.

Often we don’t pay attention. But the more we do, the more likely we will touch others in significant ways. We need to pay attention. If we don’t, we’re apt to make assumptions that simply aren’t’ true. 

-- Lois Mowday Rabey in “Women of a Generous Spirit: Touching Others with Life-Giving Love”


#4517

LISTEN TO UNDERSTAND

"You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger;…" (James 1:19)

Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

-- Stephen R. Covey


#3496

LEARNING TO PRAY

You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer.  It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing.  

-- Luis Palau


#3226

WHAT DO I SEEK?

I do not seek, O Lord, to penetrate Thy depths. I by no means think my intellect equal to them: but I long to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe; but I believe that I may understand.

-- Saint Anselm

 
#2774