listen to people's heart

As counselors, part of our duty is to listen to our counselees’ cries carefully and patiently. Listening is one of our five senses, thanks to God, that enables us to sense and hear and listen to our surroundings. In counseling, we may find listening as difficult. Meaning, there are hindrances that caused this to happen.

From the book which I’ve read entitled ‘Who Cares?’ there are a lot of things that contribute to difficulty to listen. The discipline of learning, as we can find in James 1:19, is part of the general personality trait of self-control. Most of the time when we are trying not to be ‘wrong’ in front of our counselees, we tend to be quick to speak and slow to listen.

Again, it will come back to our natural ‘quick to speak’ attitude because in most cases, we were NOT actually listening to what our counselees came to share in our offices. He or she came, expecting us to listen but we, on the other hand were not listening but were actually preparing what to say to them (while they were sharing their problems etc.).

So, listening is so difficult because we are not so ready to listen, so to speak.
The counselor’s listening ability may be improved by discerning to what God wants to say to them through the scripture. In James 1:19, we all are urged to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. It does sound helpful, at least to me.

We also must not concentrate too much on what our response to the counselees should be. Listening intensely to what they were saying will improve our ability to listen and to understand what their problems are and what they really need to hear from us as counselors.