Evangelism Is... Learning to Listen, Part 3 (The Soul-Winning Motivator #86)

Our soul winning passage from the Word of God today is Isaiah 45:22 which reads: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."

Our soul winning quote today is from Leo Buscaglia. He said: "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

Our soul winning devotional is part 69 of our series titled "What Evangelism Is" from Dave Earley and David Wheeler.

Evangelism Is...Learning to Listen (Part 3)

Key Listening Mistakes
If the goal is "attentive" and eventually "empathetic" listening, you will want to avoid the five key listening mistakes. They are:

1. Make-Believe Listening. This is similar to "pretend" listening. If listening is equated to caring, people will eventually know that you care by the way you value their words!

2. One-up Listening. Rather than listening and empathetically relating to the other person's pain, the temptation is to minimize that person's story with a more impressive experience. This will not lead to effective evangelism.

3. Barney Fife Listening. We all know about this mistake. It relates to one of Barney's most famous lines on The Andy Griffith Show, "Nip it in the bud." But sometimes it is better to listen and to keep our solutions to ourselves. The heart of "empathetic" listening is not arriving at a solution. It is, rather, the compassion it takes to be fully connected, even if that means remaining silent.

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