Learning to Listen

"Bonjour!" The professor announced as she waltzed in the classroom at 8:00 am on the dot. Such a greeting was completely expected for a beginner's French class. What we didn't expect was what happened next. She just kept talking - more like rambling actually - in rapid, fluent French.

I looked around at the other students to make sure they were just as surprised as I was, and I found looks of shock and confusion in their eyes. We all began to wonder if we were in the wrong classroom. Maybe this was French 300 instead of 101? 

She continued on and on, waving her hands entusiastically as she spoke. From my limited French, I could catch a word or two here and there. Putting the pieces together, I could understand that she was introducing herself and commenting on the rainy weather. She passed out a sheet of paper, entirely in French, and instructed us to fill it out about ourselves. Then she passed out another piece of paper - also entirely in French - that appeared to be a news article and instructed us to read it. 

She paused while we "read" it - though we knew not 97% of the words on the page. After giving us some time, she broke the silence. "Well, nobody has run out of class yet!" A sign of relief audibly escaped the classroom. It was the first English sentence we had heard, and it was twenty minutes into class! 

Still, I was pleasantly surprised that I could follow the gist of what she had said in those twenty minutes just by catching familiar words, phrases, and sound-like-English words here and there. 

She then reassured us that we were indeed in elementary French class. She likes to begin every class with such an exercise because it teaches students to listen. In order to learn a language, you must learn to recognize the sounds so that you can become familiar with the words in order to separate them and make meaning out of them. 

"Even though we all want to learn how to speak," she commented, "we also must learn to listen."

I have now sat through three French classes, and she starts each class the same with about twenty minutes of purely French conversation. She repeats lots of words, and even involves us by asking simple questions and helping us to answer them entirely in French. And even now, only three days later, I am beginning to train my ears to listen to the French language without becoming overwhelmed. I am slowly recognizing repeated words and phrases, learning to piece them together to form general ideas, and building confidence in learning a new language. 

We all want to know how to speak, but we must also learn to listen. 

Learning a new language is a lot like learning to pray I think. We all want to know how to talk, but what we really need to do first is learn how to listen. Sometimes I feel like God's language is different from ours (simply because we are human and He is God; his ways are higher than ours and his thoughts are greater than ours), but it is not beyond comprehension. If only we will learn how to listen, we will begin to understand his ways of communicating with us. 

Maybe we sometimes struggle to pray because we are trying to learn this language the wrong way. We are studying methods and memorizing as much as we can out of a textbook when really all we need is to learn how to listen. And that just takes practice, maybe even as little as twenty minutes a day. 

Even twenty minutes of listening to the Lord each day will teach us to recognize his voice, and then we will become familiar with how he speaks and what kinds of things he communicates to us. Before we know it, we will be understanding and speaking more than we thought possible.

They say language immersion is the best way to learn a new language, and I wholeheartedly agree. In the same way, prayer immersion is the best way to learn how to communicate with God. "Pray without ceasing," 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says. That's prayer immersion. Surrounding ourselves with his voice, making time to listen, and being intentional about praying through every circumstance of the day will tune our ears to hear and speak with God. 

Who knew that twenty minutes of confusion and shock at the beginning of my first French class one day could actually end up boosting my confidence and helping me to learn a new language? Don't be afraid of jumping into a new prayer adventure because you just might be pleasantly surprised by how much you can hear from God.