- Prayer– Come with your soul prepared to hear God’s Word by praying for God’s blessing.
- Appetite– Come with holy appetite. You are about to feast with Christ.
- Tender Teachable Heart– “What will you have me to do? Speak to me, dear Father.â€
- Be Attentive– Discipline your mind to be attentive with your mind in preaching; keep yourself from distractions as much as possible. Try to be as involved in hearing as the preacher is in preaching (Calvin taught this).
- Receive with meekness– Receive with meekness the ingrafted word (James 1:21); this is a submissive frame of heart (Psalm 131). Through meekness the Word gets deeper into our souls and we are more able to receive it.
- Faith– Mingle the preached word with faith as you’re listening and as you later reflect and meditate upon the truth. The chief ingredient of listening to a sermon must be faith in order to apply the word.
- Retain– Retain and pray over what you have heard. Don’t let the sermon run through your mind like water going through a sieve. Our memory should be like the chest of the ark where the Law was placed. Go from your knees to the sermon and go from the sermon to your knees.
- Practice– Practice what you have heard; live out what God has taught you.
- Beg– For the effectual blessing of the Holy Spirit; this is the “swallowing of the medicine to heal youâ€.
- Familiarize– Go home and speak about it to family, friends, others, so that you will become very familiar with the truths.
***Remember each sermon as if it was the last you will ever hear, because that just may be the case.***