From the Home Place

February 18, 2026

20 degrees at 4 a.m., headed for 45. Praise the Lord, the wind has subsided some, only 31 mph gusts today. Yesterday was a bit tough with 70+ mph winds all day and most of the night. It looks a bunch like winter tomorrow with 12 for a high, -6 for a low and a good chance of snow.

Yesterday, I helped our Pastor and his dad install a new speaker system in our church. Several dollars’ worth of equipment took all day to install, but the new system sure are nice. The sound is amazing! As we were installing the new system yesterday, my mind went back to the scene of Jeus standing along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, while speaking to hundreds of people sitting on the hillside, with no speaker system at all, and yet, it appears that everyone was able to hear the words of Jesus.

Now hear me please, I’m not knocking the PA systems of today, in fact, I feel they are needed. Why? Could it be that we need elaborate PA systems in our churches today because everyone is accustomed to hearing their music played on extremely nice stereo equipment? Also, it is important to have a great speaker system within the church, because people tend to be poor listeners today.

As you sit in your local church this Sunday, listen to all of the noise that is taking place around you. Some folks are talking, others are rattling papers and candy wrappers, while still others are shuffling around in their seat. It seems that we are just a plain noisy people.

Why is it so difficult to sit still and quietly listen to a 30-minute sermon, when we are accustomed to sitting still for hours watching a movie or television? It could be the way the sermon is delivered, yet more likely, it is the difference in our interest level between a sermon and a movie?

It isn’t because we have a good idea of what pastor is going to say that makes us poor listeners, shoot, within the first minutes of many movies, you have a good idea of how the rest of it will go. Maybe we don’t have poor listening abilities when it comes to a sermon after all, perhaps the problem is poor interest in the topic.

At our local church, we are blessed to receive really good sermons from our pastor, as most of you are as well at your church. Yet I notice that unless I really engage my mind, I will soon be off in some other place, focusing upon on some other topic. You see my friends, the pastor, the speakers, the topic tends not to be the problem, the issue that our minds tend to wander.

Remember, James tells us to not just listen to a sermon, but that we are to apply that message to our daily lives after we hear it. Yet we all know that if I lived half of the sermons that I have listened to, the people around me would be amazed at how differently I would live my life!

So, maybe the problem with today’s church isn’t that we don’t listen well? Perhaps the problem isn’t with the speaker system? The problem is with the listener system. As the old saying goes, we listen to the sermon and “it goes in one ear and out the other.”

I would suggest that to make myself a better listener, I have to anticipate that what the pastor is saying is a relevant message from God to me. Sunday’s sermon is not just a bunch of words that fill a specific time frame, it is a message from God concerning how He wants me to live, or about something He wants me to do! Could it be that we are not poor listeners, but we do fail often at application thus impacting how we listen?

Remedy, perhaps it begins before I ever step into the church on Sunday morning. Perhaps we should simply take a moment before leaving for church and pray that the Holy Spirit will help me be attentive to that which He wishes to teach me today, so that I can apply it tomorrow? As the saying goes, “Try it, you might like it!” I am suggesting that if we each will improve our application skills, that will improve our listening skills. After all, why go to church if it isn’t to encounter the living God? We need to be anticipating and listening for the one truth that He wants us to apply, so that others will see our good works and “glorify our Father who is in heaven.”

Improving my application skills with you, Neal