Listen to Others

Good morning, church.

I uh was asked when I came in early this morning.

Uh, do I get nervous before I preach?

And I said, Not until today.

Um, we are in a uh series called Blessed, and you all heard Nathan uh this last week if you watched online and did a tremendous job when uh he started with the be blessed uh through begin with prayer.

And by the way, I I don't believe that we can connect with community, connect with neighbors uh well unless we're praying.

And so I'd say throughout the entire series, uh, that should be a dominant theme.

And and so uh uh today I want to share though with you the importance of listening, but listening with our eyes.

Now, how many of you are of you are familiar with that term?

Listening with our eyes.

Several of you are, yeah.

You you know, as a matter of fact, if you're married, you know how important it is to listen with our eyes, because what's not what's being said is not always being said with our mouth, and what we're hearing is not always being heard just through our ears, right?

But through our eyes.

As a matter of fact, social scientists tell us that 80%, as much as 80% of all communication is nonverbal.

That's that's a bit surprising, isn't it?

But uh well, just to be honest with you, I've I've I've missed my cues uh in uh in my married life.

Uh for example, um several years ago on Valentine's Day, um I wanted to woo my wife and and give her flowers, which I ordered flowers as she got those at the church where on a Wednesday night where we had a meal, and and uh they uh brought them in and and they just thought that was just fantastic.

But I and then I came in a little bit later because I had swung by the uh store to pick up that last minute card.

And whenever I grabbed the card, I read the inside, and it was a beautiful card.

It just one of those very emotionally uh wooing cards, you know.

Uh except I had failed to read the outside.

And so whenever I handed it to Margaret, she had this wonderful, wow expression, and all of a sudden it goes, What in the world?

Matter of fact, she says to me, Uh, Did you read the outside of this card?

And I said, Well, so she reads it out loud at the table where a lot of her friends are sitting, and and uh and which uh when she reads it out loud, it went from this ah and ooh to uh hysterical laughter where because the card said, My Valentine to the man I love.

Well, guys, we don't need to miss our cues, right?

And uh well, I have I've served as your missionary uh through the years.

I've I've served in served in three states, and and uh I in the role that I'm in, I I've had uh the opportunity to interview uh a several thousand uh missionary uh potential couples that would be doing ministry together.

And and uh but one thing that I learned in that setting was that you you cannot just interview the man because the man will not always be honest.

But whenever you interview the couple together, the wife's nonverbal communication tells you more than what he's telling you.

And I have had that opportunity where I've had to say, let's go back and start at square one again, because the wife's sitting there squirming and and and her eyes just told me so much that he was not saying to me.

Well, in regard to nonverbal communication, I learned the importance of listening uh with my eyes in regard to appearance.

I I was at uh a meeting uh at the IHOP over at Covington uh about 16 months ago, and uh I was sitting there.

It's an important meeting.

I was meeting with uh uh people that was going to determine the direction that a particular property was gonna go in with with starting a new church, and um our waitress comes up and and uh she greets us to take our order, and and uh she does that.

But I'm distracted.

I I I look at her and I see this young lady whose hair is is is extremely matted, uh pinned up in place, uh, her eyes are swollen, uh her outward appearance uh just broken.

Well, she takes her water and then she leaves.

Uh and we continue our conversation, but I'll be honest with you, I was troubled in spirit.

I I I I almost couldn't pay attention to what was being said at the table.

So she comes back and brings our food, and then she asks, Is there anything else that you need?

And I said, Kelsey, yes.

I need to pray for you.

Um how can I pray for you?

And and looking in her eyes, and she starts crying, and she tells me that well, um uh I'm living in a shelter, I I've lost everything.

And uh she tells me a bit more, and so I start, you know, I just said, Well, let's listen, and we prayed.

And uh that began a 16 the last 16 months of a relationship.

I'd intentionally go out of my way whenever I go to the I schedule a lot of my meetings actually now, and and I go there and and uh and just to check on Kelsey, see how she's doing, and I pre pray prayers of faith over Kelsey.

Um and so I I saw Kelsey go from a very broken individual to just a few weeks ago I was there having a meeting with Nathan, and uh she comes to the table, by the way, not her table, and I get up and I give her a hug, and I know you're not supposed to do that, but she's become my spiritual daughter.

By the way, my wife knows this.

I I we keep in good communication on that, and and uh uh she looked like a very different person.

Uh her hair was fixed, uh, she had a smile first and and wish she didn't have a smile at all the first time I saw her, and and uh but in that meeting I uh at timed together, I I I learned that uh she was gaining an opportunity to start seeing her son, which she had not seen in over two years, and that her ex-husband was starting to give her a call.

Now, it all began because why?

Before I went to that meeting, I I prayed that morning, and I thought, well, the the prayer was, and I always pray this way anytime I go into meetings.

Matter of fact, typically when I start the day, I ask Lord, Lord, will you please help me tune in to you?

Let me hear your voice in whatever I'm doing.

And um, I thought it's to be listening to those men and what's gonna happen with that property, but no, God has something else in mind, and so uh the Lord wills for us to listen and not just with our ears, but with our eyes, to be discerning, but he'll give us that discernment, won't he?

Well, actually, something very similar to happened to in Jesus' ministry is recorded in in John the fourth chapter.

And uh it's a long text.

And you say, well, Larry, you're not gonna get through in the next 45 minutes, well, next hour and a half.

Um well, no, I I yeah, I won't.

Well, I'm gonna focus on Christ, our role model, and how he listened to this lady and the difference that it made.

So y'all, y'all tune in with me just for a moment.

Um you see, when we when we listen with our eyes, the spiritually broken and hurting will know we care and invite us into their lives.

In John 4, verses 4 through 7, our text reads this way.

John 4:4–7

It says that he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied, wearied as he was from his journey, by the way, this shows Christ and his humanity, um, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

I'm asking the Lord to speak to us this morning through this dynamic text.

You see, Jesus knew that he was sent.

He was living sent.

Um, and the story begins with, but he needed to go through Samaria in verse 4.

And then again, if I have read the text, in verse 34, it says, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Uh, those of you that are King James lovers, anybody here love the King James, the poetic style.

Well, I love King James, and but here's the way the King James says it.

He says, and he must needs go through Samaria.

Y'all recognize that?

Well, was that really the case?

Did he really need to go through Samaria?

Well, the answer is yes, because he was listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

And you say, well, wait a minute.

Now here's the the God man and he's depending on the Holy Spirit, and the answer is yes.

You see, he um he's role modeling for you and I through his humanity, how we are to depend on the Holy Spirit and his voice speaking into our lives.

And so he was guided, he was prompted by the Spirit of God to go through Samaria.

Well, a good Jew would not do that, would he?

Well, actually, because they they despised the Samaritans, uh, they considered them to be half-breeds and uh in a and they had perverted the Jewish religion, and so they would have nothing to do with them, but the spirit of God prompted, have you known God's promptings in your life through the Spirit of God?

You see, just as the Spirit of God spoke to Jesus then, he speaks to our lives today because we are his hands and his feet, aren't we?

Well, the Father had sent Jesus to go where others would not go because of culture, because of these Samaritans.

There are people, though, that you and I avoid if we're not careful, because they don't quite live the way we live.

They appear, don't appear the way that we believe that they should.

Well, when we lift stint, though, we will go where Jesus would go, and we'll go to the broken and the needy.

We'll encounter needs that only Jesus can meet because we are his hands and his feet.

Well, as we go, we will encounter God-prepared people.

Jesus had walked all morning and being tired, he sat at Jacob's well and sent the disciples to town to get food.

Two miles away to Sichar, he met a woman at high noon, the sixth hour, that our text says it's the sixth hour.

Well, the Jewish timekeeping system that would mean that it would be high noon.

Well, why would ladies, let me ask you, why would a lady carry a three-gallon pot to be filled with water?

Why would she go there at high noon and by the way by herself?

How would that happen?

Well, you see, the towns, and Jesus knew this.

Again, by observing, Jesus knew that the women would go out early that morning and in the morning before the heat of the day, and and and they would draw water.

But by the way, they would draw water at Stychar, which there was a well in Scycar.

But this lady came all the way out, two miles out, to draw water.

And she came out by herself.

Why?

Because she was an outcast of the town.

And Jesus knew that, he discerned that.

And so Jesus discerned with his eyes and the spirit her greatest need and told her.

He had asked her for water, but uh he used water as an illustration, and and he used that to bridge the good news into her life.

He he told her in verse 10 that if she would ask, she would receive.

You see, the Spirit of God will give you and I practical connectors if we're paying attention as we're going about, as we're doing life.

We'll have those God-ordained opportunities, those divine intersections.

But we have to be observing, we have to be listening, not just with our ears, but with our eyes.

Um we run from uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable circumstances, or are those divine opportunities?

If we're listening to the Spirit of God, those may very well be spirit-ordained opportunities to lift others up.

Just as I was prompted to do with Kelsey, who was broken, messed up, lost everything she had through a drug addiction.

But she needed to be encouraged and built up in the faith.

The woman wanted to bring a distraction.

She wanted to talk about worship, true worship.

Well, worship being a place.

But Jesus answered, gave her this answer, but the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship him.

You see, the religious people that we'll encounter in our daily walk, in our daily lives, will give us religious answers as a mask, as a cover-up to what's actually going on in their life.

And by the way, if you think back, some of you, if you think back before Christ, you know, BC before Christ, and I was there at one time in my life, prior to July the 23rd of 1974, I knew how to be religious, and I knew I had the religious jargon nailed down.

I could give you a good answer, a good excuse, but it was a mask because of my brokenness and my emptiness that was going on inside of me.

Others in your life that God has put in your path are going to do something very similar.

Well, in verses uh 25 and 26, he says uh this.

Let me turn to the text and where Jesus responds, he says, the the woman said to him, I I know the Messiah is coming.

See, he'd uh dealt with the reasoning for the location and for worship.

Uh and when he when he is called, he is called the Christ, the Messiah, the promised one, and when he comes, he will tell us all things.

And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.

She had come face to face with the truth, the promised one.

And for us, it's the being able to bring the truth to uh others that are broken through our lives, uh, through our testimony.

Uh, by the way, I'm in a men's group, uh, Clay and I are in a men's group together, and we've been telling them, helping them learn how to tell their story, how they experience life transformation, so that we are in the right to be able to share his story.

And that Clay, and that's what we're doing, right?

Well, uh, that's exactly what's happened here.

It in a sense, the the risen uh at this point, the pre-risen Savior is confronting this broken lady.

And in this text, she comes to realize that it's only the promised one that can set her free.

Um I am the one that you are seeking.

I who speak to you am He.

This was the divine, this was a divine intersection where uh when we live, we will also encounter others, God prepared people.

Um you see, we are coming out of something called a pandemic, aren't we?

Um say what's that got to do?

They think, well, here's what it has to do.

We now live in a in a new relational epidemic of loneliness.

People have been living behind social media, they've been living behind closed doors, living in fear.

And people all around you are lonely and and they're crying out for relationships.

Where you go to work, maybe where you go to school or where you send your your child to school, people are lonely and they're broken and they're needy.

They need somebody to listen to them and to care.

Will we care?

Well, this one who became a seeker became transformed, and she is sent back.

This this transformed one is now going to go go back and is going to live sent, uh, leaving uh her old identity.

I I love the picture that's that has says that she she leaves her pot and she goes back.

And by the way, where did she when she went back to Sikar?

I I love some of the translations, some of the earlier translations that she says she went back to tell all the men of Sikar.

By the way, why do you think that she didn't go back and tell the ladies?

Think with me for a minute.

Well, because they despised her, they didn't want anything to do with her, but she went back and she told the men, by the way, this is the first recorded revival that began in Samaria.

So this broken one, the one that uh Jesus listened to, the one that Jesus spoke truth to her, became the transformed one God used to take the good news back and begin, if you wish, a gospel movement in Sychar.

Uh I don't whether you've heard that side of the story of the woman at the well.

You probably heard many other things, but but it all came down to listening to truth.

You see, when we listen, when we listen to the hearts of others, others will go when they're spiritually transformed, and they'll they'll take, they'll lose, they'll drop their old identity because the new identity is in Christ, right?

And they'll take that good news, they'll take that good news back to family, to friends.

Well, she took the good news back when she said to them, she said, Come and see a man who told me all things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?

Yeah, she had their attention.

As a matter of fact, they came out, came out in large, came out in large numbers.

There's a text here in the latter part of this, verses 34.

And I'll be honest with you, when I went to bed last night, I I uh I didn't sleep real well last night.

I shouldn't confess that to you.

I don't think Russ ever has ever done that.

Uh, but I'll I I will.

But here's here's uh the part of this text that kept the Lord just kept running over and over my my heart and my mind.

He says there in verse 35, he says, Look, I tell you.

Look, I tell you.

Lift up your eyes and see the fields that are white for harvest.

I just had this picture in my mind.

If I'm if I'm one of those uh learning disciples.

Those one of those soon to become apostles that were immature.

Okay, they were immature.

Why?

Because they had these this prejudice toward these outsiders, outsiders of the faith, these impure people, the Samaritans.

Well, we were surrounded here all kinds of folks just like that.

That we, if we're not careful, we'll put labels on.

Don't you despise labels?

But don't we use them?

Well, they had.

Take notice.

Lift up your eyes.

For the fields are wide on the harvest.

Was he looking at a grain field?

And the answer is no.

I I suspect he was he was pointing back to Sychar and the numbers that were starting to come out.

These people that they didn't want to associate with, didn't want to have anything.

Well, they were good enough to go get food from, but they didn't want to associate with them.

Well, Jesus said that his food, they brought back food, and they said, Oh, eat, eat.

I I can just hear this, you know.

I'm thinking about the old uh Greek, my favorite Greek wedding, you know, the mom said, Eat, eat, y'all, y'all, you'll I can hear them saying that, but but in a Jewish tone.

Uh, and Jesus said, You don't get it.

He says, My meat, uh, my food, that which satisfies me is to do the will of my father.

Now let me ask you something.

What satisfies you?

What satisfies me?

What satisfies Larry is is it is it to have a more things, a nicer place, to be well respected, to be well known, or or is it to fulfill God's purpose for my life?

Is it to fulfill God's purpose for your life?

Well, I've had people say, well, Larry, you can't know God's will.

I just don't know God's will.

Let me let me tell you, I'm I'm gonna, you know, you can talk to me later about this if you want to.

You may say, Larry, you're being arrogant.

I said, No, but I'm gonna tell you what God's will is for your life.

Look up.

Look before you.

Take notice.

God has a plan for you, and it's right in front of our eyes.

Um when we start where we are with what we have.

When we start where we are, God will show us, people, there will be those divine opportunities, those divine intersections, if you wish.

I like calling them divine intersections.

Um when we start with where we are, we will open our eyes to the harvest.

He said, look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.

And because folks, the harvest is now.

I I I don't have time to preach a message on prophecy, but I think that we're seeing prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes.

It's it's it's uh we're in the latter days, and I don't think I think that our days are short.

At least that's what God keeps impressing upon my heart, and people all around me are in desperate need of a savior.

Will I be the Lord's disciple?

Will you be the Lord's disciple?

And remove remove those mental barriers from people uh that keeps you from them.

But did you realize that four out of five, more than 80, it's estimated that 84% now of our of our county is lost and unchurched?

Does that bother you?

Well, let me tell you what even bothers me is as much or more.

When I served as your missionary years ago over in Gwinnett County, that number was was uh approximately 60% of the county was dechurched.

And so I went there to start churches.

Today that county is 90% lost in our church.

Is the enemy winning?

Or is it that the church is not being the church?

Um I want to be a part of the Lord's harvest.

Do you?

That's what this text tells us to be.

We're to be a part of the harvest.

In 2 Corinthians 5.18, he he calls each one of us to be his ministers of reconciliation.

So you say, well, I'm not a minister.

Well, that's not so, because if you're in Christ, the word of God says that you are his minister.

You are a minister of reconciliation.

He goes on, as a matter of fact, I grew up as a royal ambassador.

Some of you may remember that that program, and our our motto was uh we are ambassadors for Christ.

Well, we are to go as his ambassadors.

His message then is our message.

We have no other message than his message.

Well, I want you and I want myself, my family, I want us to glorify the Lord in all that we do.

To do that, we've got to start listening and starting to pay attention.

We have to listen not just with our ears, but listen with our eyes, because people out there are needy.

Well, whenever Margaret and I lived at Glen Allen, just before coming back here, uh we went back again as your missionaries, and I serving in the greater DC area, and I'd drive up there and I'd work those long, crazy hours driving all over the metro up there, and yeah, it's as crazy as you think it is.

Uh I saw it firsthand.

And uh but I knew that we lived in a community, the Glenn Allen community, and they and people all around us, uh, I did not know.

I knew that God had a plan and a purpose for us just to just to be there, because I don't think that God ever puts us at some place where he doesn't intend for us to be a shining light, beacon of it of hope.

And so I said to Margaret, I said, honey, I said, I want you to practice your spiritual gifts of cooking and shopping.

I said, I want you to make some cookies and to buy some shopping bags.

And I wrote a note and when we fixed up the bags, and I put in the in the note.

And by the way, we've only been there about three months, and I said, uh, uh, we are your your new neighbors and want you to know that we love neighbors and we're praying, we pray each week for our neighbors.

If you have a need, please call me or text me, and I gave my phone number, and we'd deliver those bags.

And then I go out and I'd pray, I'd pray, walk to the community, and Margaret would pray, and and uh well, living across the street from us was uh a single lady, her name, single lady named Eve, and and uh she but she was the foster mom, she did foster care, and and uh she had uh at that time she had two boys that she was taking care of, uh uh Taron and and uh Lorentz.

Thank you, Taron and Lorenz, and and uh uh been praying.

I we've been praying for them, been praying for Eve and the boys, and and uh uh Eve came over one day and she said she was having adjustment problems with with uh with uh Taron.

And uh I understood that because uh uh I'd been a foster child, and so I I told her, I said, I uh Eve, if if I can help you, I'd like to do that.

I said, I I and I told her a little bit of my backstory and been been in foster care, and and uh I said, I have some material that I'd like for you to read as a devotional, reading it over the boys, and she said she welcomed that and that's our spiritual conversations.

And so over a period of several months, uh she would read that, she'd talk to them about Jesus, and uh one by one the boys got saved, and we got invited before just before we left to the baptismal service.

I'll be honest with you, one of the hardest things we had to do whenever we left Glen Allen was leaving our boys because they were like our grandsons, and Eve, who became like a sister to us.

Well, how did that happen?

Well, it happened because we prayed, we cared, we practiced that that tremendous hospitality gift of delivering cookies and pray.

I think that's something that every one of you could do.

But I I just want to ask you though, can can you say, I want to be the church.

I'm going to be the church where I live.

I'm gonna be the Lord's disciple, and uh I I just want to be used by him, and I believe it's possible.

Well, we all have neighbors, don't we?

That's what this series is about, blessing our neighbors.

We all have neighbors, and the you know, when the the Pharisee asked uh, who is my neighbor?

when he asked Jesus that, Jesus responded to the story of the Good Samaritan made it clear.

It says, Whoever's in front of you in need.

Do you have people in front of you that are in need?

Let's your neighbor.

Well, when we listen with our eyes, we will see the spiritually broken and hurting, and they'll invite us into their lives.

So I'm gonna pray for us now that as we go, we're gonna be the hands and feet of Jesus and listen with our eyes.

Lord, I bow before you now, and I pray for each one of these, my brothers and sisters.

Thank you for them.

I pray, Lord, that you'd help those that have experienced life transformation to go and share with others how they can be spiritually transformed, how they can know you as Savior and Lord.

But Lord, I pray that you give them the grace and the wisdom, the discernment to know what to do and how to do it.

But Lord, by listening, listening with their eyes.

Lord, I pray for those that are here that have not given surrender of their lives to you today.

I pray that, Lord, they will listen to your voice, speaking to them, drawing them to you.

Lord, help them, Lord, to commit their lives to you by asking you to be the Lord and Savior, to surrender their lives to you and to confess their need for you.

I pray for them now.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.