How to Serve Others (1 of 6) by James Boice

We must be practical at this point. Jesus served us by leaving heaven, taking on true human nature, teaching, and then dying on the cross for our sin. We cannot do that. So we must ask, “How can we serve others? In what way must we demonstrate the servant nature of our Master?” I suggest the following.

1.We must listen to others. In Life Together Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this the first part of genuine Christian service.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

The reason that listening is so important is not always that people have a great deal to say but rather that they are desperate to have someone listen to them. Our world is characterized by a great cacophony(harsh or discordant sounds)of voices. People are shouting at us everywhere. They are shouting in commercials, in books and magazines, in signs by the roadside, at home, at work, at play. Everywhere we go someone is trying to get some message across to us. No one is listening to what we have to say. Everyone is too busy talking.

For many people life is like picking up a telephone, dialing a number, and getting a recording. We want to say, “Stop playing that thing, and listen to me.” But, of course, no one is even listening to our complaint.

So we have the unique phenomenon in our day of people paying other people to listen to them, which is what the psychiatric, psychological, and counseling professions are all about. Counseling is a billion-dollar business. But it is not that counselors actually advise or guide people in the vast majority of cases. Basically all they do is listen. They are paid to do what people in an earlier day did voluntarily.

Christians should be the greatest listeners this world has ever had. But unfortunately, they too are often talking instead of listening. Or even if we are listening, we are often listening only partially or impatiently, as we wait for the person to stop so we can get on with telling him what he should do to get right with God or get his life in order. Is that not true? Think of conversations you have had recently and ask your self if your mind was not wandering as the other person spoke, if you were not hoping he or she would make it short, if you were not anxiously restless until you got your turn to speak. Ask yourself if your conversations with others are not mostly your sounding off about what interests you rather than really hearing the other person and responding directly to what he or she has to say.

If you are doing this, you should know that it is not only the other person who is harmed. You are harmed too, for, as Bonhoeffer astutely points out, “He who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words.”

It is significant in regard to this part of Christian service that one of the tasks God has given His people is hearing one another’s confessions (James 5:16). To hear a confession is something almost never practiced today-at least in the Protestant church. Protestants probably justify this as a rejection of what we regard as a Catholic error, that is, the saying of a confession to a priest and the receiving of absolution by him in Christ’s name. We are probably right in identifying the erroneous aspects of this practice. But is that really the reason we fail to hear confessions? Is it not rather that we are too busy talking to listen to what our fellow believer has to tell us? Is the other person not defrauded and harmed by our neglect? God listens to us and forgives us through the words of Scripture. We should listen to others, as God listens to us, so that we may speak the consoling words of God to them.”