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April 12, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
30:06
Adultery, Questions, Answers and the Ability to listen
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, hope all is going well on this Wednesday.
In just a minute, as I promised last week, I'm going to get into taking the shifting gear down a little bit.
We're going to go into a study on communication.
And I'm going to take this from Scripture.
As most all of you know, I'm a pastor, I'm a chaplain in the Air Force.
Faith is very important to me, but also it's the life lessons that you can gain from Scripture that I believe can actually apply.
And the other week I was going through Even before Easter, going through and reading and having what I call my quiet time.
And I came across a passage, a very familiar passage to many.
It may not be familiar to you, and I will not...
I'll make sure that you understand the context and everything else.
So in case you are not familiar with it, I want you to understand the story.
The story is a biblical story, but it's a story that I think if we relate to it, can actually...
Give us some help in our everyday communication and how we do in leadership.
So in just a few minutes, we're going to get to that.
This is, again, an incredibly busy week.
We've had a lot of things going on around the world that are still concerning.
It is just the state of play in the world economy.
And let me just touch on this for just a minute.
Folks, we're going to get, I'm going to have some, in the next little bit, I'm trying to get some folks lined up right now to discuss the currency situation.
I'm not talking about Bitcoin.
I'm not talking about that.
That's the whole digital issue that we've been talking about a lot here.
But the baseline for the world's economy has been the U.S. dollar for 60 years, at least, if not more.
We're getting into a position now, though, where China is moving across the world to buy and...
Especially commodities such as oil, other things like that, with countries, and they're trading for the first time in yuan, the Chinese currency.
We've seen this from Saudi Arabia, we've seen it from Brazil, and a couple other places.
The concern here is real, and we're not hearing a lot about this.
Only a few stations are talking about it.
Only mainstream media is barely touching on it.
We're going to touch on it more here because something to be concerned about that if you're looking at the standard of currency, you've got to understand that with the dollar gone, and then everybody sort of uses whatever currency they want, Think about it, the old feudal days of each country having their own system, nobody being on a standard.
This could get interesting.
And it also, though, takes away from the United States economic power as well.
So we're going to talk about this as days come, but start reading up on this as we go forward.
I want you to not be aware.
And the Biden administration, again, I think has led to a lot of this.
Through just really poor economic choices here in the U.S. and also a lack of involvement in foreign affairs across the globe.
And I think we're paying the price for that as we go forward.
But right now, getting ready to have a lesson on leadership, a lesson on communication, and we'll be right back with that in just a minute.
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All right.
I grew up and listening to people and learning, and just to let the listeners out there know, I'm an audible learner.
If you tell me about things, I'm much better at it than if you wrote it out.
Now, I do okay with written instructions, and I'm fine with it.
It's just that visual aspect.
But for me, it's the visual and audible style of learning that is the key for me to actually comprehending something.
So for instance, if I watch somebody do something, I can typically pick it right up.
If I do the directions, it takes me a little, I get it done, but I also then have to visualize each step of the direction.
So again, everybody processes differently.
This is completely normal.
Think about it right now in your own life.
How do you actually learn?
Would you prefer to read something and learn it, which I do a lot out of books, or do you prefer to watch a video?
Today's generation, this is completely becoming the dominant of the Z in millennial generations is you watch something on YouTube and then copy it.
My son, Copeland, my oldest son, went to work and was repairing small engines, and I asked him one day, I said, because he never really went to a small engine repair class or went anywhere To learn.
And I said, how do you work on some of these engines?
He said, well, Dad, I just look at it.
And he said, then we got videos that we can watch.
And it just blew my mind.
I mean, again, I make no bones.
I'm a beloved part of Gen X. I mean, I have my feet in the old world and I have my feet in the new world.
But it just blew my mind that here was my son I'm very proud of who was actually learning how to work on small engines by watching videos.
Not the way I was brought up.
Our videos were somebody showing you how to do it.
And typically it was my dad said, I'm going to show you once, then you're going to do it.
There's a plaque at the old Chicago hospital in the emergency room that said, and as far as learning, It says, watch one, do one, teach one.
Watch one, do one, teach one.
In other words, if you're out there, you watch one, then you do it, and then you teach it.
And that really solidifies it.
So out there, if you're looking to actually how you want to solidify learning in your life, the best way to go about it is to do it and then teach it.
Teach it to somebody else.
Because when you're teaching it to somebody else, then you've got to have mastery of it yourself.
So just a look there.
One of the things growing up that I found out very quickly, there is a difference between hearing and listening.
Hearing and listening.
And many times, this is something that gets us all in trouble.
Because have you ever, and I hope you understand what I'm saying here.
If not, let me give you an example.
How many times have you been in a conversation with someone, or maybe at a group table, and you hear the conversations going on, and then somebody says, well, what do you think about that?
And for a minute you're caught because you've been hearing the sound, but you've not been listening to what was going on.
It's a difference.
I can hear many things.
You can hear this podcast.
And something will be going along and you're driving, you're running, you're working out, whatever it may be.
And then all of a sudden you hear something and say, wait, wait, what did Doug say?
What did that guest say?
And you go back and listen to it.
Hearing is simply the audible part that your ears hears, your brain recognizes that there's noise going on.
Listening is taking that hearing, taking that noise, and then applying it into an actual understanding.
And this is something that we've got to understand because we're in a society today in which what is said is taken so literally at times or so abstractly at times or even out of context at times that it is the thing that is getting people Cancel culture, banned, you know, things that may have been perfectly okay two weeks ago are now no longer okay.
Part of the lesson that I want to give today comes from an old proverb, you know, out of the book of Proverbs.
It says, he who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rationally will come to ruin.
In other words, think about what you're saying.
Too many times today, how many times have we known athletes, movie stars, politicians, church leaders, business leaders, who say something without thinking And then end up regretting it because it either goes viral on a video, it gets reported.
And sometimes, I know this is hard for all of us because we all like to have those moments in which we have downtime.
Those downtime when we are not always watching everything we say.
But as this proverb reminds us is that, you know, if you speak rationally, you're going to come through and you've got to guard what's your thoughts.
You've got to guard what comes out of your mouth.
You've got to guard those things to make sure that you're properly communicating.
This leads me to the story and then the lesson for today, if you would.
And that is that in the Bible, in the New Testament, which is the Gospels for which Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, first four, John is the fourth, John wrote the Gospel narrating Jesus's life, okay?
And if you're not from a Christian background, This is the record of what Jesus did, historically did, while he was here in his ministry.
In one of those stories, He is confronted with a group of Jewish leaders and Jewish citizens in an interesting situation.
They were trying to catch him.
How many times in today's world, and for those of us who do interviews a lot, for those of us who are on media, and even in normal life, you're going to have, there's a lot more of the gotcha mentality out there.
There's much more of the gotcha mentality.
I thought that I'm going to ask a question.
I've had reporters who would do this.
They would ask questions to get you.
They were gotcha questions.
As you grow in doing interviews, you learn to take those questions and turn them around.
You don't take them on the face value.
You answer the questions the way you want to answer it, and you don't accept the premise of a gotcha question.
But if you're not used to it, it can catch you and you get thrown off.
So Jesus, in his ministry, he was teaching and he was doing ministry, and these leaders brought to him, this appears in John chapter 8. So if you're in the scripture, you go to John, the book of John, if you have a Bible for a return to the New Testament, you can find it there, find John, look for the chapter 8, and it's the very first 1 through 11. And this is where he says that Jesus was at the Mount of Olives, and dawn appeared, and people did gather around him to teach.
But then there was these teachers of the law, the Pharisees, who had came there, and they brought a woman who was caught in adultery.
Okay, this is a story that if you've been in church, you understand this story if you've not been in church.
This was a breaking of the law in this time, and they brought this lady, which I think is always interesting.
I always have pointed this out in my years of pastoring and mentoring, is to my mind, where was the man?
In this situation, and it was left out, but as you look at it here, the woman was brought, and they stood her before the group and before Jesus and said, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery, and in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such woman.
Now, what do you say?
And they were using this, the scripture actually says, they were using this as a trap in order to, basically, they were accusing him, because they were wanting to see what he said.
What's interesting here, though, is it says that Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
And when they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, if anyone was without sin, cast the first stone at her.
And again, he stopped down and he went to writing in the ground.
At this, there was those who had began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left and the woman.
And then Jesus straightened up again, and he said, Woman, where are they who has condemned you?
And she said, No one, sir.
And he said, Neither do I condemn you.
Go and sin no more.
I read this out because I think there's some elements here, not necessarily in the story.
We can get into the morality of the story.
There's so many different angles here.
But I want to focus on what Scripture says here was the part where they were there to trick him.
They were there to bait him into an answer, bait him into a question of what we do with this woman.
Because the conflux here was Jews could not, under Roman rule, could not kill anyone.
They could not put into capital punishment.
But yet the law of Moses said if they were caught in adultery, as this woman was, they were to be stoned.
What they were trying to do is put him in a mix of saying he's either going to go against the Roman authority or he's going to go against the law of Moses.
This was the trick.
What I think is so fascinating, what stood out to me again as I read this passage, was that Jesus didn't answer at first.
And let me think about this.
Let me let you think about this for a second.
Because he was confronted with a question.
He didn't answer right off.
In fact, it said he bent down and started writing or writing in the dirt, using his finger in the dirt, squiggly line, writing something.
We don't know what he wrote.
We don't know what he drew or anything else.
But what you take from that was is that he took the question.
He saw the situation.
He paused, wrote in the ground, as the scripture says here, and they kept on questioning him for a moment.
In other words, he wouldn't give them the answer at the moment they asked for it.
Lesson number one in leading and listening and hearing.
A leader must listen.
And that means that they must understand what is being said to them.
If you don't understand what a subordinate or someone who works for you or even someone that you could run into contact on the side of the road who's asking a question, don't just answer without understanding.
First rule of answering questions, first rule of working with employees, first rule of working with your family, is you need to understand what's being asked of you.
How many times have we got into it, and guys, we're the worst at this.
I'm going to just put guys on the table first.
I know some of you say that women are, but I'm going to say guys are, that we're real quick to hear something and respond quickly.
To fix something, when if we'd actually listened to the question or listened to the conversation, we would realize that it wasn't up to us to maybe fix it or answer it.
They were asking for, or venting if you would, or not asking a pointed question, but they were asking for input.
Listening to what is being said is the first aspect of understanding.
What Jesus did here was he took the question, He didn't answer right off.
He swatted down.
He started writing in the dark.
It said they continued to ask him questions.
As someone who's been in politics and been badgered by Reporters on questions all the time.
This is what happens because we are an impatient people.
If somebody doesn't answer us, we are like the coddler who says, I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
And we're trying to communicate.
And that is the, we want an answer.
But sometimes the answer is not best given until we understood what is being asked.
And I know this sounds simple to you, but just think about how many times in the last quarter, in the last three months, this has gotten you in trouble.
It's gotten me in trouble.
My wife would be talking, I was not listening, I was hearing, and then she said, she stopped and I tried to answer and I was like, I was way off base.
I was not hearing.
I was hearing, but I was not listening.
So my answer came across and give me away.
Here it is.
I wasn't listening to her.
And the first question that came out was, you're not listening to me.
This gets us in trouble.
So what Jesus did was he took time.
He paused.
He started squiggling in the sand saying, look, I'm pausing to take this answer.
And then as they continued to answer the question, he did not let them push him into an answer he wasn't ready to give.
Now, it said, after they continued, he said, then straightened up, and he said, and he made the famous quote, and many of you may have heard this, whether you knew it was a biblical context or not, it says, he who is out sinned, be sure to cast the first stone.
And then he stooped down again and wrote on the ground.
Now, this to me was, it took me a moment to sit there and think about this.
He was listening to what they were saying.
He comprehended what they were saying.
He understood the implications of what they were saying.
Remember, they were trying to trick him here.
The scripture had already told us this.
So he understood that his answer was going to be scrutinized.
And it was going to be scrutinized under the Roman law and under the Jewish law, and they were trying to get him at odds with one or the other.
By listening and comprehending, he threw the question back at them and said, okay, fine.
Well, you who is out first stone without sin cast the first stone.
In other words, he took the question, took the premise, and turned it back on them.
He did not accept the premise of their question.
He made it about them, which is not about Roman law, not about Jewish law, but he said, what about you?
And then he did what most of us can't do.
You know, I've joked about this before.
We have the right to remain silent.
Most of us just don't have the ability to remain silent.
Believe me, there is a reason when you're under investigation and the police are asking you questions, your best option is to just shut up.
Don't say anything.
Let them, if they have a case, they're going to make the case.
Don't give it to them for them.
I have had clients after client who probably would have not been arrested had they not opened their mouth.
So again, when we're talking about leadership here, how many times in your daily leadership, for those who are listening on this, whether it's a civic organization, a business, or you're in politics, or you're in media, whatever, answering questions without understanding the question is one of the biggest problems we have for people in these positions because those answers will get used against you.
So as we take this a step further, He stooped back down again.
Here's where it really gets important.
He answered the question and turned it on.
But he didn't try to follow up and make it, quote, better.
How many times have we gave a great answer and then ruined it by continuing to talk?
You know, we give the right answer.
We say, no, son, here's what you need to do.
And here's why I did it.
And back when my day, by that point, the person who asked the question had turned you off.
They were hearing, not listening.
And your whole answer was ruined.
What Jesus did here was he stopped again.
This is a great, great learning and communicating technique.
Say what you want to say and then stop.
The biggest problem with most people in communication is you're scared of the silence.
And this is in relationships, this is in business, this is in others.
For most salespeople, and if you're out there today and you're listening to this podcast, you're going to your next sales call, let me just tell you, you will close more sales sometimes by being quiet than you ever will by speaking.
What do I mean by that?
Ask for the sale.
And then let them think about it.
Let the silence be on the one that is asked.
So in Jesus' case here, he turned it on them and said, hey, he was at the first stone.
You know, sin cast the first stone.
And then he just showed up.
He didn't name them.
He didn't say, hey, which one of you is going to go first?
Oh, I don't see any of you moving.
No, he just let it go.
He threw it back down and started riding the ground again.
When you're selling something, you're on a sales pitch, you get to that sales pitch and say, sir, okay, I've laid this out for you, madam.
I've laid this out.
Here's what I think the best price is.
What do you want to do?
How many times have you been in a situation where if they're silent for a minute or they don't answer, you're afraid you're losing the sale and you start, well, you know, let me just talk about this.
You know, let me give you a little more extra incentive here.
No, let them respond.
Let your child respond.
Let your spouse respond.
Let your brother, your sister, your in-laws, your dad, your mom, whoever it is, let them respond before you try to clarify.
Because it could show that they didn't understand your question to start with, number one.
Or number two, they understood it and they give you a different answer and it takes you down a different path.
This idea that you have to carry conversations gets more people in trouble than anything else.
And in leadership, and when we're dealing in leadership, leadership is about leading.
Leadership, you have to listen.
You have to hear.
You've got to put both of those together to gain understanding.
In this scriptural passage, he goes on and then he speaks to the lady.
Finally, after they have all left, said the older ones left first, they got it that he was on them, and left the woman standing there.
Then he straightened up again and he asked her, you know, who is it?
A woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?
I mean, he asked the lady.
They'd all left.
So we're not talking about a short amount of time here.
We're talking about, you know, maybe four or five minutes where they had time to walk off.
She was left by herself.
I know this is hard.
And for politicians out there, some of you listening to this podcast and you're wanting to run for office, and one of the things I've always told you is running for office will require you to raise money.
If you think you can run a, quote, grassroots campaign and not raise money, then you will lose and you lost before you ever started.
And one of the hardest things in raising money and calling to ask people for money was to be quiet.
I remember struggling with this, and as I struggled with it, it was, I would ask, and if they didn't say anything right off, I'd say, hey, can you, and I'll just use an example, can you give me $1,000 for this upcoming event?
They wouldn't say anything.
Well, how about $750?
I would start negotiating against myself.
I wasn't winning.
I wasn't listening.
I wasn't hearing.
I wasn't leading.
I was just saying, let me get this thing done because I'm uncomfortable.
Folks, the uncomfortable conversations sometimes are the best conversations when you're not speaking a word.
You're listening and you're allowing conversation to come from the other person.
When in those kind of conversations, I say, do you think you could do $1,000?
And I'll sit there.
Remember, silence is awkward for everyone, not just you.
They will eventually answer, and if they don't answer after 15, 20 seconds, and that's eternity that sounds like you've been waiting for hours on an answer, then you can simply say something like, did you understand what we're asking here?
Is that something you can possibly do?
Reiterate the question.
Look for an answer as we're going by.
Look for an answer from the person And then you make your response.
So it's this idea of taking in the situation, not speaking, listening to what's being said, and having interactive conversation.
This is one of the biggest issues I find when I've counseled for folks in business, when I've counseled them in politics, when I've counseled them in family and life.
And it is difficult.
This is not hard.
What Jesus is doing here is responding to what the leaders were trying to trick him into.
But the reality is, it's a lesson for all of us.
He didn't talk over them.
He didn't get in an argument with them.
He didn't do anything except hear their questions, listen, formulate a response, and respond.
And I think that is something that is so crucial in our relationships these days, is making sure that we are understanding that knowing what our conversations are, that in understanding the problem, understanding the issue, and then responding with educated assumptions, then we can actually have a better leadership role.
We can have a better family role.
We can have a better life role.
Because that then will have people say, he or she listens to me.
And I can't think of a greater compliment than to have somebody just simply say, they listen to you.
That's what we all want.
We all want to be listened to.
We all want to have a time in our life in which people listen to us.
But you can't listen, understanding, not just hearing, without actually taking the time to process and understand what's being said.
That doesn't mean that you, you know, you take everything and you can't respond quickly or anything else.
But when you're listening, you can respond because your mind is already formulating a response.
Your mind is already, you know, Working on the conversation.
But sometimes, especially in questions of work and family, there's a time when you just need to pause.
And say, okay, I hadn't thought of it that way.
And you're thinking to yourself, okay, how do I best respond to this person who's asking me for something?
And this is what I believe this lesson that we find here in the New Testament book of John of Jesus dealing with this person who has brought this lady who has brought him committed in the act of adultery and the trap that they were trying to lay for him.
He overcame it by listening, not being pressured, formulating his response, getting his response, and then willing to wait through the silence to see what they'll say.
This is life lessons that we all can learn from.
So today, in your business, in your life, in your community, wherever it is, take the time to listen, take the time to process, take the time to respond, And then be willing to listen to the silence while the other person has to respond back.
This is a lesson for sales.
It's a lesson for business.
It's a lesson for families.
How many times could an argument be avoided if you simply listened to what was being asked, understood the situation, just like Jesus did here when he understood the situation, and then answered in a responsible fashion instead of answering, In emotion, answering off the cuff, or not really hearing the question that's been asked.
I can think of it in my own life, and I can go back even, you know, just almost every day where I don't listen, and especially with Lisa, my bride, or with others, and she'll ask me something, and I typically do the husband mode, and I'll just answer without thinking about what I'm saying.
And if you do that, You got a problem.
So here, we're living in the week after Easter.
There's a lot of things we can look at from a perspective of faith.
This is a life lesson from faith that you can find in Scripture.
There's plenty of these in here.
We just got to look for them.
So today, go out and do these things.
You're going to hear a lot of things, but you need to listen when someone is speaking.
You need to process what they're saying.
Don't automatically just give a patent answer.
Listen, respond, and then be willing to wait for their response back.
Folks, Practical Essence here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
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