How can you improve at listening to others?

Here's Mary Cassian with a novel concept.

You put your cell phones away, put them in the drawer, turn them off, put the newspaper down, silence anything that's going to cause you to be distracted.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for Thursday, January 29, 2015.

Over the past week, Mary Cassian has been giving us some really helpful, biblical teaching about our words. Today she'll continue

with a lot of practical applications. How can you avoid distractions when you're trying to listen?

How can you show the other person you understand what they're saying? And how can you get to deep

issues that may be causing a conflict? Mary will answer those questions, continuing in this

series, conversation piece. We've been spending a lot of time talking about speech and communication,

and the thing I love about the Bible is that it is enormously practical, and that it teaches us

how to go about our daily lives and that it makes a difference in our daily lives.

I want to take a look at one verse in the book of James that gives us so much information

and there's so much good stuff packed in there in that one little verse

that if we can just take this one verse and apply it to

our lives consistently that it will make an enormous difference in our efforts to communicate,

particularly in those relationships where communication is a challenge. In those relationships

maybe with, maybe you have a teen who's going through a little bit of a challenge. In those relationships, maybe you have a teen

who's going through a little bit of a rebellious time

or who's having a real tough time connecting with mom and dad,

or you have a roommate and the relationship is strained

because there's been several things that have happened over a

period of time or perhaps it's your spouse or if you're a single gal maybe it's it's someone that

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