Something Very Bad Happens When You Stop Listening But You Keep Talking

Acts 7:57 – At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him,

Acts 7:58 – dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Acts 7:59 – While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Human relationships are built on faith and trust. I have faith you are my relative or my friend. I trust that you wish me well and will not harm me. These makes it possible for us to relate. When the faith and trust are challenged, the relationship changes or ends.

Paternity and maternity tests challenge the faith we have in relationships. The results of negative will never leave the relationship at the same place it was. Acts of betrayal and dishonesty challenge our trust in the relationship. Once cracked, the cracked trust remains a crack. The relationship may end or change. It doesn’t remain the same.

Our focus today however, is on what keeps the relationship alive. Human relationships cannot thrive without communication. You can have full faith and trust in each other, but without communication the relationship faces attrition, weakening and quietly ends. End of faith and trust may suddenly end the relationship, but end of communication brings a sudden but many time slow but sure death.

When we stop communicating we change. Something in us changes that causes us to stop communicating. It could be the affected faith and trust that triggers us to cease communication. End of communication is a symptom of something bad happening in our relationship. Therapists always seek to establish what it is first before seeking a solution.

However, it gets real bad when we refuse to listen and insist on talking. Communication requires that both sides talk and both sides listen. What you say has to be heard and understood and a response given that you hear and understand, for communication to have taken place. When you refuse to listen but insist on talking, it’s no longer communication and consequently end of relationship.

When you stop listening and insist on talking, you no longer consider the one you are talking to as human. You don’t consider them worthy to understand you or respond to you. You treat them as less human or animals or worse non-living thing.

When you slaughter an animal, does its communication with you matter? It’s cries and struggles don’t matter. You stop listening to the animal or chicken you slaughter but you keep talking. Same thing happens to human relationships. You become an abuser when you stop listening but keep talking!

Dictators do not listen to those suffering under them. Dictators keep talking but stopped listening. In your relationship you are a dictator if you do everything not to listen yet you keep talking.

The Bible tells us that, those who murdered Stephen, first stopped listening to him. They blocked their ears. They refused to listen. That empowered them to kill Stephen.

Have you stopped listening? You are about to kill that relationship if you haven’t done so already. You stopped listening to your workers? You stopped listening to your students? You stopped listening to your church members? You stopped listening to your spouse? You stopped listening to your friends and relatives? You may blame everyone else but you who stopped listening is the one who killed the relationship!

Those who killed Stephen also kept shouting. That means they wanted Stephen to listen but they didn’t want to listen to him. They had become abusers and brutal. They were wild and didn’t treat him as human. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

Do you shout in your relationship with others? In addition to your shouting, you don’t listen at all? You have officially gained the titles, dictator, brutal, abusive and given time you may be a murderer. Shouting without listening is the ultimate symptom. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

Stephen was murdered by people who first stopped listening to him but kept talking by shouting. Have you stopped listening? Are you shouting literally? Are you shouting through memos? Are you shouting in your announcements and declarations? Are you shouting in your emails and texts? Are you shouting in your veiled threats? Yet you stopped listening? You are about if you haven’t already treated the other person in an inhumane way. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

When you stop listening but you keep talking, the relationship not only ends, but you seek to enslave or harm the other person. You seek to force your will on them yet they were created free from your force. Even God doesn’t force His will in them. Therefore you start acting as if you are better than God. When you fail to force your will, you harm the other person. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

On social media we can easily find ourselves refusing to listen but we keep shouting. We ferociously attack anyone who gives a contrary opinion. That is refusing to listen. We abuse, we demean, we embarrass and threaten until they shut up, and then we keep talking. We have become social media abusers, dictators, and even murderers. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

God requires us today, to evaluate all our relationships. Is there faith and trust? If not work on restoring it. Is there communication? If not identify the problem and fix it. Have you stopped listening yet you keep talking? You are drifting away and degenerating, seek help, even divine help, you may soon act in inhumane ways. Something very bad happens when you stop listening but you keep talking!

Dear God forgive us because we stopped listening in our relationships yet we kept talking even shouting. Restore our relationships. In Jesus’s name, Amen!

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