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Gathering to Listen

Listening–a key skill for the body of Christ

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I just attended Verge 2012, a conference put on by Austin Stone, a mega-church here in Austin. It was an high-energy gathering with caliber, big-name speakers, sold out several days before it started and with something like 500 groups watching online. I had the privilege of running a workshop there.

But you know what impressed me the most?

In every main session, Stew (Michael Stewart) who organizes Verge, stopped and asked us to spend time listening to the Lord to answer two questions:

  • What is God saying to you?
  • What are you going to do about it?

Sound familiar?

Within simple/organic church we like to say there is one main skill we need to learn. How to listen to God and then respond to what he says. Seems as though Jesus is saying the same thing to many different parts of his body.

3 replies on “Listening–a key skill for the body of Christ”

Hi Felicity,
Thanks for this post. We as a Church are coming out of an age where we tended to make human decisions without listening. It is encouraging that Jesus is speaking to many strands of His people about listening and obeying.
I think another related issue in listening and obeying is discernment. We hear more than the voice of our Master. The enemy also speaks to us, as does the voice of the world and the voice of our own flesh. If we are going to become proficient at listening we need to become proficient at the related skill of discernment.
It is interesting to me that God gave his body a gift of the Spirit (discernment of spirits) that we rarely hear about in our current Christian culture. If it was important enough to have a specialized spiritual gift it must be important issue.
Keep up the good work Felicity. And thanks for writing an e-book on this very subject.

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