Chapter 8 Jesus Asked Questions

Summary

In this episode of Hero Worship, Troy Kennedy discusses the importance of imitating Jesus by asking questions. He highlights how Jesus asked 307 questions and only answered a few, emphasizing the value of listening and understanding others. Troy provides practical tips for becoming better question askers, including being loving, thoughtful, and curious. He also encourages active listening and engaging in meaningful conversations. The episode concludes with a preview of the next topic: Jesus' love for difficult people.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

Imitating Jesus includes asking questions and being a good listener.
Active listening involves repeating back what the other person said to ensure understanding.
Asking thoughtful and curious questions shows genuine interest in others.
Becoming a better question asker requires love, thoughtfulness, and curiosity.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Hero Worship
00:29 The Challenge of Serving Others
02:28 Jesus as the Master Question Asker
03:28 The Importance of Listening
04:17 The Practice of Active Listening
05:26 Jesus' Questions as a Means of Healing
06:07 Becoming Better Question Askers
07:20 The Framework for Asking Questions
08:37 Thoughtful and Curious Questioning
10:04 Showing Love and Interest in Others
11:27 Continuing the Journey of Learning
12:27 Preview of Next Week's Topic: Jesus Loves Difficult People

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Kennedy

Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Troy Kennedy (00:00.514)
Well, welcome everybody. My name is Troy Kennedy and this is Hero Worship. And this is our podcast meant to be a companion to the book, Hero Worship, a 12 week journey to become more like Jesus, where we are all striving to pursue the Savior, because there's no one more worthy of our love, worthy of our admiration, worthy of our imitation, than Jesus. And we've been doing this for a few weeks now, and if you've been journeying with this, you've...

maybe found some of the practices to be more challenging than others, more intuitive than others. Last week we talked about how Jesus served. Jesus, how do we imitate Jesus in service of others? And I gotta tell you that is of all the eleven practices that we go through, that's the hardest one for me. It's the least intuitive, it's the one that requires the most self-discipline from me. And so maybe that was an easy one for you, maybe you're one of those people who's got that spiritual gift of helps,

really are energized by stepping into people's needs and being there for them. And but not everybody has that gift and I'm not one of them. It doesn't mean I'm off the hook for helping people out but what it does mean is that I'm on a journey to become better at that to become more like Jesus. As always this podcast is meant to be a companion to the book and you can get the book on all your typical locations Amazon.com you can get it on Christianbook.com and you

me on all the social medias on Instagram at Troy M Kennedy or you can find me at my website Troy m Kennedy comm and would love to hear from you by the way in case you don't already know this I have a weekly newsletter called the one small thing newsletter what is one small thing we can do every week in our regular everyday lives to become more like Jesus to be transformed to kind of think his

Troy Kennedy (01:59.548)
Were he in your position, do what it is that you're doing. And so the one small thing, newsletter comes out every Friday and it's got some ideas from me, usually a quote from somebody else that's really, really helpful. And then one small thing, one small practice or idea to adopt as we pursue Jesus together. So you can go there, you can sign up for that at TroyMKennedy.com. There's a little sign up on the homepage there and then that'll get sent to you every Friday in your inbox.

I would love to include you in that. So, this week we're talking about how Jesus asked questions. Jesus was the master question asker. And there has been some books written about this, some really great things. Jesus asks 307 questions. He is asked 183 questions. And depending on who you read or how you dice those things down, He only answers maybe three to eight different questions.

important for us? How do we model ourselves after this pattern? How does it change our posture towards other people? You know Jesus little brother James in his book in the New Testament he tells us that we were to be slow to speak, slow to become angry, but we are quick to listen. So how do we quick to listen to other people? As someone who's kind of got a teacher mentality

and well to other people because and you probably have this struggle too. You're always thinking about in a conversation, what's the next thing? What's the next idea? How well how do what do I think about that? How would I articulate my response to this person? And in that process, the tendency is to miss what they're saying.

to not hear them well. You probably heard in one order or another, there's a practice where, say you're having conflict with a significant other, or your spouse, or one of your children, or something, and you would say, okay, whoever has got the pen or the spoon, or whatever implement you wanna use, they have the floor. And they get to say exactly what they wanna say, right, without interruption, without being,

Troy Kennedy (04:17.265)
editorialized in any way and then when they are done saying what does they say they hand the pen to you and your job then is to articulate back to them what you believe they were saying

And to their satisfaction so you need to repeat back to them Okay, what I hear you saying is this and this and they can say yes, you've got it exactly or no Actually, you missed me completely what I was trying to say was and so it what it does is it slows the conversation down It slows the interaction down and it makes sure that we are listening meaningfully to other people we're not just Listening to prompt us towards the next thing that it is. We want to say I

So in one of our previous weeks we said, Jesus slowed down, not only did he slow down his pace, but he slowed down the conversation. Very often it came to kind of a grinding halt because people, they were pushing him and they were asking him questions and then he would turn it around on them and he would ask them a series of wonderful questions like, why are you afraid? Why do you worry?

Do you want to be healed? That's a really good question, because not everybody does, right? Sometimes our pain, sometimes our hurts can become these toxic familiar friends, and we're stuck in those pains and in those hurts.

because it's a certain sense of identity. Sometimes it's something that gets empathy from other people, right? It becomes a source of significance in an odd dysfunctional kind of way. Do you wanna be healed? Jesus says, who do people say I am? And better yet, who do you say I am?

Troy Kennedy (06:07.798)
So how do we learn to ask better questions with Jesus as our model? And, you know, once again, his little brother James says, we are quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. So practically, what does that mean? Well, you can always use the pen, you know, like you can re-articulate back to someone and say, okay, what I hear you saying is this, or tell me more about that, or help me understand what it is you're saying, how it is that you're feeling, asking those kind of

interrogative questions help people to elaborate and then articulating back to them What it is you think they're saying and allow them the ability to? respond

that you are or are not indeed hearing them the way they intend. So those are really practical things that you can do. But how do we become better question askers? And I think there are three little points here that are a helpful framework for the way we ask questions. One, well, here's the three. Are they loving, thoughtful, and curious? Are we loving, thoughtful, and curious? If we're loving of this other person, we want to hear them.

them. We're asking questions that aren't just because we want to hear ourselves talk, we're asking questions because we're genuinely interested. We want to know them. When you love someone you want to know them, you want to understand them, you want to know what makes them tick, what motivates them, what drives them. And so love is the framework right for everything that's good. Love is the ground of everything and as we're walking in intimacy with Jesus, right, I

questions of the people in his immediate circle there of influence because he loves them. He actually wants an answer. So is it loving? Is it thoughtful? You know sometimes if your kids, if you're a parent, if your kids come home from school and you know better than to ask them yes or no questions and sometimes you know how did it go? Fine.

Troy Kennedy (08:15.298)
What did your teachers say? Oh, nothing. I mean, sometimes you really have to probe because you really do care and they don't want to expend the energy to answer. Um, the reason isn't because you're trying to drill them. Maybe, maybe you're trying to teach them how to become a better person, a better, a better interact with other people to care enough about the person who is asking the question to meaningfully respond.

But we're asking thoughtful questions. Well, how did that make you feel when your friend said that to you? How did it, what are you going to do about that conflict? When you're angry about that situation, what does it make you think about yourself? What does it make you think about them? Is there a problem in you that you can address, right? Those are the ideas, those are thoughtful questions that we can ask, and are we genuinely curious, right?

Interested Paul writes in one of his letters. He just says hey to esteem others needs above your own to be interested in other people's things and I got to tell you I'm I struggle with this because I've got a pretty broad range of interest and Sometimes like even my own wife. My wife is a dog trainer, right? She is and she's really great at it and she has clients all over our city here and sometimes

I have a hard time hearing about another dog, about another training. And it's not that it's a bad thing and it's not that I don't like dogs because I love dogs but I just am not in the minutiae the way she is in the techniques and these things. And so for me, I need to go, this is important to her. This is the way she's making a livelihood. This is something that blesses our whole family. You know, I need to be more supportive and more interested in what she's doing.

boys might be have an interest like a sport that I don't particularly care for. I'm not a real sporty guy but what I do is my younger boy is. He really enjoys football and basketball and baseball and just kind of keeping track of all these things so I have to find ways to engage with those things that interest him because I love him and because I'm curious as to why that is something that

Troy Kennedy (10:35.832)
Are we loving? Are we thoughtful? Are we curious? Let that drive us. One of the things I did on Father's Day recently, I'm shooting this video during the summer, is I asked my boys this, in five years from now...

What are three words you would like other people to use to describe you? And they came up with words like successful, like creative, like responsible, those kinds of things. And so, okay, what's the follow-up question? What does creative mean to you? Or what is success? How would you define success five years from now? And then the follow-up question to that is then what can you do today that will set you on the course towards that goal so that people would indeed describe you as being resourceful.

or curious or successful or kind.

We can have a lifelong journey of learning to become better question askers, motivated, genuine love, thoughtfulness, curiosity in the direction of the other person. I would love to hear from you if you've got any thoughts or comments or indigestion with the things that we're saying here. I would love to hear from you. You can find me at TroyMKennedy.com. You can email me at Troy at TroyMKennedy.com. And I would love to get those emails and respond to you.

please subscribe to the newsletter. You can hear regularly from me with things I'm doing and if I have any follow-ups or anything in the future, I'm planning to do more kind of another season of this podcast that would include some interviews with some really interesting people as we are all on this journey to pursue Jesus. So you can email me. Please consider leaving a review for Hero Worship on Amazon.com. It apparently means something. And next week, we're going to be doing something

Troy Kennedy (12:27.276)
obvious. The chapter in the book is Jesus loved people. Now, for sure, Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, but really the chapter should be titled, Jesus loves difficult people.

There are people in your world, there's sandpaper people, those people that grind against your character, those people that, you know, bless their heart, I wish they lived in another state, right? Those kinds of people that you don't really wanna interact with, and you don't really mean them harm, but you really don't wanna have anything to do with them. And yet they are unavoidable. Could be people in your workplace, people in your neighborhood, people in your house. Jesus loved difficult people.

follow the Savior into that practice. We're going to talk about that next week. God bless you. Have an amazing week and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.