“Good listening is a great means of grace in the dynamic of true Christian fellowship. Not only is it a channel through which God continues to pour his grace into our lives, but it’s also his way of using us as his means of grace in the lives of others.”

It is one thing to hear, but another thing to listen. Good communication and healthy relationships depend upon not only hearing the words other people say, but on carefully listening to what they mean to communicate. To listen is to love.
But if we are honest, few of us are good listeners. It’s easy enough to hear others, but very difficult to truly listen to them. That may be particularly true and particularly important in the context of the local church where we are called to love one another, to care for one another, and to bear one another’s burdens. None of this is possible without good listening. David Mathis addresses this problem in his excellent book Habits of Grace and offers six lessons in good listening.
Good listening requires patience. We must not succumb to hasty or inattentive listening, but be willing to listen patiently and thoroughly. We must focus on the speaker and not on the inevitable distractions in our minds or in our environment. We must listen in such a way that we are not already planning what we will say to combat the speaker or to defend ourselves. “Good listening,” says Mathis, “silences the smartphone and doesn’t stop the story, but is attentive and patient.”
Good listening is key to fulfilling so many of the ethical commands of the Bible, the greatest of which is love.
Good listening is an act of love. When we listen poorly, we are just waiting for the opportunity to cut off the other person so we can move on with our lives. “Poor listening rejects; good listening embraces. Poor listening diminishes others, while good listening invites them to exist, and to matter.” Good listening is key to fulfilling so many of the ethical commands of the Bible, the greatest of which is love.

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The Disney placemats are set. Then come the purple and green polypropylene plates (try saying that three times fast). There are still hands to wash, bibs to put on, utensils to grab, and sippy cups to search for throughout the house. Oh yeah, and Mom and Dad still need some food, too. But, in due time, the table is finally set, hands are joined, a prayer is said, and we begin.
This is the current daily routine for Hannah and I when dinnertime rolls around. Every day leading up to that hour looks a little different. I sometimes imagine our kids huddling up in the morning to dole out which of them (if not all of them) will be the one to not take a nap, or which one will volunteer as the day’s distinguished Button Pusher.
Despite how the variables of the day have played out, it is this evening rhythm that gets us in the same room, around the same table, to share the same meal. There is something about that tiny window of time between the “Amen” and those first bites of dinner that is sacred, perhaps even sacramental. It’s my favorite part of the meal. In that brief pause, each of us are daily brought back to reality, and reminded of what we cannot afford to forget: we belong to God and to one another.
There is another space of life where you and I get in on this moment. Here, there are no bibs to disperse or placemats to set. But we find ourselves again at a table. His table. We pause, clutching the bread, carefully holding the cup. We confess, we pray, we praise. All around the table, as we take the bread and the cup, we remember and proclaim: we belong to God, and to one another.
Trouble in Corinth
The Church at Corinth needed a wake-up call. Badly. They earned the longest two letters Paul wrote in the New Testament. In his first letter to Corinth, Paul addresses a host of issues: sexual immorality, selfishness, lawsuits against one another, and other divisions in the church. But Paul spends a great deal of time rebuking their treatment of the Lord’s Supper.
Prior to this, it seemed that some from the Corinthian church were eating meals within pagan temples. These temples would make animal sacrifices to false gods but would also be the spot used for hosting various dinner parties and banquets. The people felt it was their “right” to eat wherever they desired; but Paul disagrees. He tells them that it is inappropriate to eat such food in such places, as it seems to be sympathetic toward the world’s idols and could cause a fellow brother or sister in Christ to stumble in their conscience. This contributed to rifts being formed among certain factions of believers in Corinth.
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Here I want to briefly note three new books written by him or about him. The first is a work by Alister McGrath on Packer’s life and thought. And the other two are posthumous collections of some of his writings. If you love Packer, and/or simply love the Lord, theology, the Christian life, and Puritan and Reformed thought, these books are must adds to your library.

There are some folks you just cannot get enough of. If they are authors, you always want to read more from them – even well after they have passed away. And publishers also know the value of coming out with even more books from departed but much-loved writers.
For the believer there are some very well-known Christian authors who are continuously being mined by publishers, seeking to get the very last dregs out of their corpus. C. S. Lewis would be one obvious example. Just about everything he has written – including letters to correspondents and the like – has been resurrected and published.
So too with A. W. Tozer. All of his books have been published and republished, and then the publishing houses went through all his sermons, articles, and so on. One of the newest collections of his works features his public prayers. For someone who only had around a dozen works published during his lifetime, there are now well over 100 titles all bearing his name.
One could be a bit cynical here and argue that pretty soon a collection of his shopping lists might appear. Yes, I jest, but I probably would be the first one to buy such a volume if it were released! We just cannot get enough of some of these great Christian writers.
Another author plenty of Christians just can never get enough of is the late J. I. Packer. The famous English theologian, Christian leader, and author only passed away relatively recently (July 17, 2020). See my write-up about him here: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/07/18/notable-christians-j-i-packer/
But some new volumes by or about him have already appeared. And that is good news for Packer lovers, of which I am one. I have a number of books on Packer, and at least 40 books written by Packer. And there are around 100 articles on my website about him, referring to him, or quoting him. So I am a big fan of Packer.
Here I want to briefly note three new books written by him or about him. The first is a work by Alister McGrath on Packer’s life and thought. And the other two are posthumous collections of some of his writings. Here they are:
Alister McGrath, J. I. Packer: His Life and Thought (IVP, 2020)
McGrath has already penned a full-length biography of Packer: J. I. Packer: A Biography (Baker, 1997). In this volume he looks further at his life, his writings and theology. A number of key topics and moments from his life are discussed in some 13 chapters.
Thus we learn further about his conversion, his love of the Puritans, his high regard for Scripture, his desire to always bring together theology and the Christian life, and so on. Let me share just one quote, from his chapter on “Theology and the Life of the Church.” Says McGrath:

Packer argues that it is never enough for us to know about God; true Christian theology is about knowing God – a relational and transformative process of knowing and being known, which sustains and informs the Christian life. The Christian encounter with God is transformative. As Packer, following Calvin, pointed out, to know God is to be changed by God; true knowledge of God leads to worship, as the believer is caught up in a transforming and renewing encounter with the living God. The ultimate test of whether we have grasped theological truth is thus not so much whether we have comprehended it rationally, but whether it has transformed us experientially. In an important sense, we are not called on to master theology, but to allow it to master us. This helps us to understand Packer’s intense concern with Christian piety, especially as this is expressed and sustained by the doctrine of sanctification.

J. I. Packer, The Heritage of Anglican Theology (Crossway, 2021)
This volume is about the history and thought of Anglicanism. It is based on lectures Packer had given at Regent College over the years. 
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