The Sacred Art of Listening
Thoughts on 1 Peter 3:8; Romans 12:15; James 5:16
It’s a curious thing. We live in an age where you can have more “friends” than a medieval king had subjects. You can carry them all around in your pocket, sorted into neat digital rows, each with a photo where they look slightly better than they really do.
And yet… one out of four people say they have no one to talk to about the things that really matter. That means when life really presses in – when the job falls apart, when the diagnosis comes, or a relationship shatters, 25% of the people around you have no one they feel safe talking to. No one.
Psychologist Dan Kiley even has a name for this: the LTL Syndrome, “living together loneliness.” You share a house, a kitchen, even a bed, but you still can feel utterly disconnected. What all this proves is that the longing for relationship is woven into us. And we can’t laugh it off, silence it, or scroll it away.
Evidently, the New Testament saw this coming. (Because God, unlike us, has always known the difference between contacts and connections.) And tucked into its pages are these marvelous little instructions we call the “one another” passages. They’re not particularly flashy. They just say things like: love one another, serve one another, forgive one another… and, crucially for today, listen to one another.
Listening doesn’t sound all that “spiritual.” But listening is not some throwaway social skill. It is a gospel practice. When we listen to one another, we make room for God to speak to us, to work in us.
There are three dimensions of listening. Sympathy – Listening to feel for one another. Empathy – listening to feel with one another. Confession – listening to be honest with one another.
Sympathy (1 Peter 3:8):
Peter says (1 Peter 3:8): “Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.”
Peter gives us a short summary of the Christian way of relating. Harmony. Love. Compassion. Humility. And right in the middle of the list is sympathy.
Sympathy means trying, as best we can, to see the world through someone else’s spectacles. And the only way to do that is to listen.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. “Listening” is not the same as “hearing.” Hearing is what happens when sound waves bounce off your eardrum. Listening is what happens when you give someone your undivided attention. Listening means reading between the lines, noticing tone, body language, and catching the pauses. You can’t always get into someone else’s head, but you can listen to their story.
And no, sympathy is not about handing out advice like confetti. It’s about closing your mouth and opening your ears. Sympathy starts there. And sometimes, if you have to respond at all, the best response is a simple, “Thanks for telling me. That sounds really hard.”
Empathy (Romans 12:15):
Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Rejoicing is the easy part. Everyone loves a party. But mourning? That’s where people get twitchy. We prefer to change the subject. Or fix the problem. Or drop in a Christian cliché. (“Everything happens for a reason!”)
But Paul doesn’t say, “Cheer up those who mourn.” He says, “Mourn with them.” Which means pulling up a chair in the darkness, staying there, and not looking at your watch. Sometimes the holiest response is to sit in silence and say, “This is terrible. I’m so sorry.” Empathy means you show up. You exercise patience. (You can’t mourn on a timer.) And you share their sorrow.
Even Jesus did this. At Lazarus’s tomb, He didn’t fast forward to the happy ending. He entered Mary and Martha’s grief. He wept. Which means that the Son of God Himself thought empathy was more important than efficiency.
Confession (James 5:16):
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
Now, this one is awkward because most of us would rather do almost anything else than admit our failures to another human being.
But James insists. Because he knows that healing happens when we stop hiding. Sin thrives in silence; confession drags it into the light, where it shrivels. When we speak our faults out loud to one another, we make space for God to step in with forgiveness and grace.
No, your friend can’t absolve you on God’s behalf. But they can look you in the eye and remind you of grace and call you to something better. And that, it turns out, is part of how God heals us.
Listening sounds ordinary. It is not. It is one of the most profoundly spiritual acts we can do. Sympathy lets us feel for one another. Empathy lets us feel with one another. Confession lets us be honest to one another.
We live in a world that is drowning in noise but starving for attention.
What if the church were different? What if we were the one place where your joys are celebrated as if they were everyone’s joys? Your sorrows were carried so you never had to bear them alone. Your sins could be confessed without the fear of rejection and met with the grace of Christ. That is what listening creates. That is what the New Testament envisions.
Because when we listen to one another, we make room for God to speak to us, to work in us. Listening is how the lonely find a home, the broken find healing, and the world catches a glimpse of Christ.
It’s a curious thing. We live in an age where you can have more “friends” than a medieval king had subjects. You can carry them all around in your pocket, sorted into neat digital rows, each with a photo where they look slightly better than they really do.
And yet… one out of four people say they have no one to talk to about the things that really matter. That means when life really presses in – when the job falls apart, when the diagnosis comes, or a relationship shatters, 25% of the people around you have no one they feel safe talking to. No one.
Psychologist Dan Kiley even has a name for this: the LTL Syndrome, “living together loneliness.” You share a house, a kitchen, even a bed, but you still can feel utterly disconnected. What all this proves is that the longing for relationship is woven into us. And we can’t laugh it off, silence it, or scroll it away.
Evidently, the New Testament saw this coming. (Because God, unlike us, has always known the difference between contacts and connections.) And tucked into its pages are these marvelous little instructions we call the “one another” passages. They’re not particularly flashy. They just say things like: love one another, serve one another, forgive one another… and, crucially for today, listen to one another.
Listening doesn’t sound all that “spiritual.” But listening is not some throwaway social skill. It is a gospel practice. When we listen to one another, we make room for God to speak to us, to work in us.
There are three dimensions of listening. Sympathy – Listening to feel for one another. Empathy – listening to feel with one another. Confession – listening to be honest with one another.
Sympathy (1 Peter 3:8):
Peter says (1 Peter 3:8): “Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.”
Peter gives us a short summary of the Christian way of relating. Harmony. Love. Compassion. Humility. And right in the middle of the list is sympathy.
Sympathy means trying, as best we can, to see the world through someone else’s spectacles. And the only way to do that is to listen.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. “Listening” is not the same as “hearing.” Hearing is what happens when sound waves bounce off your eardrum. Listening is what happens when you give someone your undivided attention. Listening means reading between the lines, noticing tone, body language, and catching the pauses. You can’t always get into someone else’s head, but you can listen to their story.
And no, sympathy is not about handing out advice like confetti. It’s about closing your mouth and opening your ears. Sympathy starts there. And sometimes, if you have to respond at all, the best response is a simple, “Thanks for telling me. That sounds really hard.”
Empathy (Romans 12:15):
Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Rejoicing is the easy part. Everyone loves a party. But mourning? That’s where people get twitchy. We prefer to change the subject. Or fix the problem. Or drop in a Christian cliché. (“Everything happens for a reason!”)
But Paul doesn’t say, “Cheer up those who mourn.” He says, “Mourn with them.” Which means pulling up a chair in the darkness, staying there, and not looking at your watch. Sometimes the holiest response is to sit in silence and say, “This is terrible. I’m so sorry.” Empathy means you show up. You exercise patience. (You can’t mourn on a timer.) And you share their sorrow.
Even Jesus did this. At Lazarus’s tomb, He didn’t fast forward to the happy ending. He entered Mary and Martha’s grief. He wept. Which means that the Son of God Himself thought empathy was more important than efficiency.
Confession (James 5:16):
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
Now, this one is awkward because most of us would rather do almost anything else than admit our failures to another human being.
But James insists. Because he knows that healing happens when we stop hiding. Sin thrives in silence; confession drags it into the light, where it shrivels. When we speak our faults out loud to one another, we make space for God to step in with forgiveness and grace.
No, your friend can’t absolve you on God’s behalf. But they can look you in the eye and remind you of grace and call you to something better. And that, it turns out, is part of how God heals us.
Listening sounds ordinary. It is not. It is one of the most profoundly spiritual acts we can do. Sympathy lets us feel for one another. Empathy lets us feel with one another. Confession lets us be honest to one another.
We live in a world that is drowning in noise but starving for attention.
What if the church were different? What if we were the one place where your joys are celebrated as if they were everyone’s joys? Your sorrows were carried so you never had to bear them alone. Your sins could be confessed without the fear of rejection and met with the grace of Christ. That is what listening creates. That is what the New Testament envisions.
Because when we listen to one another, we make room for God to speak to us, to work in us. Listening is how the lonely find a home, the broken find healing, and the world catches a glimpse of Christ.
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