Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
The Lost Art of Listening
Have you ever missed an important message because you weren't really listening? Today's episode of Starting Right with Danny Mac explores the lost art of truly hearing what's being communicated around us through a fascinating historical tale.
The episode delves into our modern listening challenges, highlighting research that shows most people are poor listeners who only hear what they want when they want it. Between constant digital distractions, environmental noise, and our own preoccupations, critical messages often go "in one ear and out the other." Danny connects this everyday challenge to spiritual wisdom from Proverbs 3:6: "Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go." Today's podcast might just change how you listen to everything and everyone around you.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. I wanted to tell you a story this morning that I think you will enjoy. It's a story about a young man and a telegraph machine. Now, the telegraph was invented back in the 1830s and for almost 100 years it was the main way of communicating long distances. It was that tap, tap, tap. Using dots and dashes to form letters, which would then spell out words, using dots and dashes to form letters, which would then spell out words, and throughout the world it was the most used and popular way to communicate to someone far away. If you watch the movie Titanic, they're using a telegraph machine on it as it starts to sink. Many old movies, including a lot of westerns, show telegraph machines. They were very common and used around the world.
Speaker 1:Well, today's story took place back in the late 1800s. It's about a young man who saw an ad in the local newspaper from a company who was looking for a telegraph operator, so he went to the office that was listed. When he arrived, he entered a large, busy office filled with all kinds of noise and clatter, including the sound of the telegraph in the background. A sign on the receptionist's counter instructed job applicants to fill out a form and wait until they were summoned to enter the inner office. The young man filled out his form. He sat down with seven other applicants in the waiting area. After a few minutes the young man stood up, he crossed the room to the door of the inner office and he walked right in. Now, naturally, all the other applicants sort of perked up, wondering what was going on. They muttered amongst themselves that they hadn't heard any summons yet. They assumed that the young man who went into the office made a mistake and would probably get kicked out and be disqualified. However, within a few minutes, the employer escorted the young man out of the office and said to the other applicants gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, but the job has been filled. The other applicants began to grumble to each other and one spoke up saying hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't understand. He was the last to come in and we never even got a chance to be interviewed yet he got the job. That's not fair. The employer smiled and said I'm sorry, but for the last several minutes, while you've been sitting here, the telegraph has been ticking out the following message in Morse code If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours. None of you heard it or understood it. This young man did the job is his.
Speaker 1:I read a study recently that said that most people are very poor listeners. They tend to hear what they want to hear when they want to hear it. Part of the problem is that there's so many other things that are vying for our attention. There's so much noise going on around us. We're listening to music, or we're surrounded by traffic, or we're in a group of people, we're in a crowded restaurant, or we're sitting at home watching television and not having conversations with each other. As a whole, we tend not to hear all the things that we should hear, and then afterwards that can cause us some problems because of instructions that somebody gave us to do something and we didn't hear it. Or we were told not to do something and we did it because we didn't hear not to do it. And then there becomes the blame game you didn't tell me. Yes, I did, you just didn't hear it. No, you didn't tell me. And unfortunately what happens is, even when we do hear it, it may go into our ears, but it goes in one ear and right out the other. It never gets trapped in our minds long enough to become something that we know we need to take action on. It really is sad and unfortunately I have to admit that I've been caught up in it myself.
Speaker 1:Proverbs, chapter 3 and verse 6 in the Message Translation says Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go. He's the one who will keep you on track. We really need to be better listeners in every area of our lives. The people that we love and that we work with and that are our friends they all want and deserve to be heard by us. But we also need to really make sure that we're hearing what God is saying.
Speaker 1:He does not always write on the wall or speak in that big, booming voice. Sometimes, to hear what he's telling us, we have to be tuned in to him to hear it, just like that young man was tuned in to the telegraph and heard it while he was sitting outside. He heard what the telegraph was saying in the midst of all of the other clutter and clatter and he responded to it. I hope you all have a great day. My friends, listen for God. Today he's speaking to it. I hope you all have a great day. My friends, listen for God. Today he's speaking to you. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right, with Danny Mac.
