Communication Isn't Easy
Now there is a mouthful of words in a short title. Communication is hard and we must work at it for it to be effective. One principle I learned from Dr. Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary is, "what is said is not nearly as important as what is heard." Not that what I say isn't important but what is heard is more important. Let me illustrate with this example.
In our early years of marriage my wife and I were on a church staff in Crestwood, KY. We had two preschool daughters and both of us had meetings after church on Wednesday night. Becky must have thought her meeting was more important than mine because she asked me "to take the girls home after church and get them to bed." I replied by saying, "I'll take care of it." I got one of the ladies in the church to take the girls home and I went to my meeting. Becky's meeting did not take as long as mine and when I got home she was a litter irritated. "You said you would bring the girls home." "No, I said I'd take care of it and I did." What I said earlier was not nearly as important as what Becky heard. Through the years I have tried to be sure that I was hearing correctly and that she was hearing me correctly.
Too often we hear what we want to hear rather than what is being said. As we learn about communication I hope we can keep that in mind because as the author says, "communication is the fuel of a relationship."
I was struck by the statistic the author gave that 25% of young people have never had a meaningful conversation with their father. Surely we can do better than that as followers of Jesus. Let me challenge you fathers to sit down with your son or daughter and have a conversation, not a lecture or an "in my day we…" but a conversation about things that are important to your child. Your children might not respond at first but give them a chance to process this new and foreign behavior you are displaying.
What do you think?
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