Learning how to really listen is the hardest and most constantly challenging part of being a disciple of Jesus and a pastor.
The temptation is to jump in with answers, as if that will bring God’s power to the situation.
We’re not the first response team.
God is always here before us.
What is he already doing?

…one who has no interest in cultivating a habit of listening is not yet ready for what ministry in Jesus’s name will require. Ours is a listening vocation. From a posture of attentive invocation we give language to what is there. As ambassador-discerners, we enter the stories of others and say each day to them and to ourselves, “Slow down. Look here, listen, God is revealing himself.”
Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, Crossway, 2013, pg 202.