When Did You Last Actually Listen?

Stephen Covey once said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Read that again. Most people — not some people. Most. And if we are being brutally honest with ourselves this morning, that includes us. That includes me.  

When did you last sit completely still before God — and mean it? Not the thirty seconds in the car before you turned up the worship playlist. Not the quick “Lord, bless this food” before the fork hit the plate. Not the quick prayer when you are laying in bed, going down your list of requests before you drift off to sleep.

I mean truly still. Quiet. Expectant. Listening.  Here is why that question matters. According to a 2024 DataReportal study, the average person spends two hours and twenty-seven minutes every single day on social media alone. That is scrolling, posting, commenting, reacting, watching. Two hours and twenty-seven minutes of noise. And that does not even count the podcasts, the TV, the group chats, or the news cycle running in the background of our minds. 

We are the most connected generation in human history, and somehow, we are also the most spiritually distracted. There is something deeply wrong with that picture.  So today, I am going to spend a few minutes in God’s Word — because it turns out, He has been trying to get a word in for a very long time.

James Agrees With Your Silence

Jump over to the New Testament to James 1:19. James puts it plainly: “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.” (NASB) 

Quick to hear. Slow to speak.  Notice the order. Hearing comes first. Listening is the priority. Speaking is secondary. 

And yet, if we are being honest, we live that verse completely backwards most of the time. We are quick to speak, quick to post, quick to react — and somewhere way at the back of the line is actually listening. To each other. And especially to God.  

Here is where I want you to picture something. Think about the last time you sent an important text — maybe to someone you love, maybe about something that really mattered — and then you sat there staring at your phone waiting for that little bubble to pop up. You know the feeling. Your phone is face up on the table. You check it every forty-five seconds. You pick it up, you put it down, you pick it up again. You are completely, totally, one hundred percent focused on what that person is about to say back to you.  Now — when is the last time you gave God that same quality of attention?  

Think about that. We will give our phone screen fifteen minutes of raw, undivided, expectant focus, waiting for another person’s response. But when it comes to the God of the universe — the one who spoke galaxies into existence and knows your name — we struggle to give Him five minutes of quiet, honest, expectant listening. 

James is not just giving us good communication advice here. He is calling us to a posture of the heart. Be quick to hear. Be quick to hear God.

Your Quiet Time Is Your Trust Fall

Now look at Mark 1:35. This is where it gets really convicting, because we are not just talking about a good habit or a self-care practice. We are talking about following the example of Jesus himself. 

Mark writes: “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.” (NASB)  Let that land for a second. Jesus — the Son of God, fully divine, the one through whom all things were made — woke up before dawn and withdrew to a quiet place to be alone with the Father. Jesus did not wing His day. Jesus did not roll out of bed and immediately jump into ministry mode. He paused. He withdrew. He was still before He was active.  And if the Son of God built that discipline into His daily rhythm, what does that say to us?  

Here is the practical challenge I want to put in front of you today. Starting tomorrow morning — not when things slow down, tomorrow — set aside a specific, non-negotiable block of time to be still before God. Put it in your calendar the way you would put in a doctor’s appointment or a meeting with a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Maybe it is fifteen minutes. Maybe it is thirty. But make it real, make it consistent, and make it quiet. No phone. No background noise. Just you, your Bible, and the expectant posture of someone who actually believes God has something to say.  

Do you know what a “trust fall” is?  Because here is the thing about a trust fall — it only works when you actually let go. Silence before God is your daily trust fall. It is the act of saying, “I am going to stop filling this space with my own noise, because I trust that what You have to say is worth more than anything I could generate on my own.”

Maybe God Isn’t Silent

So here is where I want to leave you today. I have had a lot of moments in life, especially over the last few years where I said,, “I just feel like God is silent. I pray, and I hear nothing. I feel like He is not there.” That feeling is real and it’s often a painful place to be.  The silence can be deafeningly painful.  

But I want to offer you a challenge:  Have you actually been quiet enough to hear Him?  Because James told us to be quick to hear. And Jesus himself showed us what it looks like to withdraw from the noise before the day even begins.  

Your challenge this week is simple, and it is hard all at once: be still. Intentionally, deliberately, expectantly still. Give God the same focused attention you give your phone screen. Follow Jesus into the early morning quiet. Let silence stop being the thing you avoid and start being the discipline that changes everything.  

Maybe God is not silent. Maybe He is just waiting for you to be.