The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

by Adam S. McHugh

Publisher:

IVP

, 2015

Overview

Christianity Today’s Book of the Year Award
Logos Association Bookstore Award
Bookwi.se’s Favorite Books of the Year
Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year

"Be quick to listen, slow to speak." —James 1:19

How would our lives change if we approached every experience with the intention of listening first?

In this noisy, distracting world, it is difficult to truly hear. People talk past each other, eager to be heard but somehow deaf to what is being said. Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life.

Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission in the world. God himself is the God who hears, and we too can learn to hear what God may be saying through creation, through Scripture, through people. By cultivating a posture of listening, we become more attentive and engaged with those around us. Listening shapes us and equips us to be more attuned to people in pain and more able to minister to those in distress.

Our lives are qualitatively different—indeed, better—when we become listeners. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

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Contents

Introduction
1. The Listening Life
2. The King Who Listens
3. Listening to God
4. Listening to Scripture
5. Listening to Creation
6. Listening to Others
7. Listening to People in Pain
8. Listening to Your Life
9. The Society of Reverse Listening
Epilogue
Notes

Praise for The Listening Life

"At a time when we are drowning in words—both digital and spoken—this quiet little book throws us a life preserver. The Listening Life is gentle, thoughtful, biblical, and eminently practical. It outlines a broad theology of listening alongside specific and clear practices that teach the reader to listen in a new way. Whether you are a loud lover of words or a shy lover of solitude, this book will likely convict you."

"This book is an essential antidote and a welcome aid to listen well—to God and to one another."

"I say this more often than I actually do it, but this is a book that I will read again. It is easier to read about listening than actually listen, as McHugh says, but this was a very good reminder of why listening is important, and how we can better listen to God, those around us, and ourselves."

"McHugh is the author of The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction, in which he outlines a dozen traps people can fall into if they don’t approach listening in the right way. . . . Good listeners are patient and unselfish, and they can recognize when it’s their turn to speak. When they do so, they provide reassuring commentary or ask gentle, probing questions. That is the express lane to conflict resolution."

"Hearing is the first sense we develop and the last to go in death. But listening is not a natural capacity. The Bible is clear on this point. We do not automatically listen to God, others, or even ourselves. McHugh’s book can change the way you approach your daily conversations. It may even change your life. You should listen."

"Throughout his wise and witty work, McHugh (Introverts in the Church) lobbies readers to prick up their ears. ‘Listening,’ he writes, ‘comes first.’ McHugh predicates this marvelous book on what lousy listeners we are, then proceeds to offer means for changing our habits. . . . McHugh writes humbly about learning to hear deeply, because ‘the beginning of discipleship is listening.’ He writes intimately, telling his own stories in the same tone as he retells tales from the Bible. McHugh mixes more formal writing with conversational sections, liberally quoting colleagues and resources (from John Coltrane to Homer Simpson) and including personal anecdotes, aphorisms, and loving admonishments tied together with keen humor. This is a persuasive book for those with ears ready to listen to what McHugh has to say."

"Listening is one of the best gifts we can give or receive. Listening changes things. Listening, the way Adam McHugh describes it, could just change the world."

"Adam McHugh has been a significant contributor to the conversation about how introverts experience the world. His new book, The Listening Life, has the power to reshape how both introverts and extroverts make space for deep listening in a world that swims in the shallows. Highly recommended."

"The Listening Life is the kind of book that made me at times not want to turn the page—because I needed to! What the book did was still my soul and remind me to be still before God—to silence the noise and open the closed doors to hear. In hearing we learn that in listening to God and to one another we enter into the graces of love. On every page Adam McHugh offers wisdom that slowly marches us into a deeper kind of life, one marked by listening to God in a way that teaches us how to listen to one another and to ourselves. There are two kinds of people: those who talk and those who listen—the former need to read this book slowly and listen well to the lesson about reverse listening, while the latter will discover fresh light on a discipline now deepened."

"If it were possible to combine the voices of Dallas Willard, N. D. Wilson and Jim Gaffigan, then what you would get is Adam S. McHugh. His writing is profound, lyrical and self-deprecating in all the right ways. There are few books I want to start again once I’ve finished. The Listening Life is now one of them. I adore this stunning, important book and want to give it to everyone I know."

Product Details

• Title : The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction
• Author: McHugh, Adam S.
• Publisher: IVP Books
• Publication Date: 2015
• ISBN: 9780830879694

About Adam S. McHugh

Adam S. McHugh (ThM, Princeton Theological Seminary) is an ordained Presbyterian minister and spiritual director, and a regular contributor to Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution website. He has served at two Presbyterian churches, as a hospice chaplain and as campus staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He is the author of The Listening Life, which won the 2017 Christianity Today Book Award for spiritual formation, and Introverts in the Church, and lives on the central coast of California.