Often first found in what is being overlooked.
This is a line I often hear in conflict, yet it barely scratches the surface of the feeling "behind the lines" so to speak. More times than not it reveals a need for a concrete answer to a concrete question that gives the space for two people to live in intimacy as one couple sharing their various differences and preferences in order to be seen and known.
It takes a free man or woman to usher another into freedom. Psalm 118:5 Taking others seriously by serving them before taking their spoken words literally is how we strengthen and sing them into this freedom. Psalm 142:7
Over time serving them allows the freedom to move away from their refuge of words into the refuge of friendship through fellowship. 2 Corinthians 7:13-16
We hold them through listening rather than holding them to an accountability of only what is said. This intimacy brings meaning as a person rather than a problem. Amos 8:4
They begin to taste and see who they really are rather than a meaningless shadow using words to hide behind.
Learn to freely listen through compassion and comfort first received, then given. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
True accountability is born out of freedom, not imposition. Our deepest struggle is rarely what we think is wrong. Our deepest struggle is confronting the freedom that we have and being accountable to it by choice. In that confrontation by reflecting on what we are thinking(carefully thought), we begin to overcome evil with good. In other words we begin to meet resistance with gentleness born out of the knowledge that overcoming evil by trying to be right is really demanding justice without giving it. That is no accountability. It’s simply bondage.
Giving justice frees us from the need to avoid wrong and just freely turn from it.
For example if I say I struggle with jealousy, my struggle is not with jealousy but the freedom not to be while holding myself accountable to that free choice.
Redemption after wailing. Wailing has the sense and the sound of hell. But it can be the journey to the well of grief. The wall blocking grief is revenge or the need to avenge. Don’t get even, get sad. Then the real journey that requires no travel begins.
Echoes without the mirrored image.
Beating the pavement when we should be at rest.
Taming of the shrewd. Shrewd investing is investing in others.
The deep sense of being fed rather than making sense of something in order to understand.
Gut wrench.
It is more than intellectual assent. It is an act of the will.
Contrast and comparison or Person? Proof or Truth? Words or Word? Read or Hear? Analyse or Realize? Black or White or Dark and Light? See or Know?
The telltale sign that you aren't listening.
Movers and shapers, not shakers.