How to Make the Most of a Sermon

From Puritan minister Richard Baxter, here are ten exhortations regarding "Directions for holy Resolutions and Affections in Hearing."

"The understanding and memory are but the passage to the heart, and the practice is but the expression of the heart: therefore how to work upon the heart is the principal business."

Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.~John 17:17 

1)  Live under the most convincing, lively, serious preacher that possibly you can.   What man that is alive and awake, doth not feel a very great difference between a dead and a lively preacher?

2)  Remember that ministers are the messengers of Christ and come to you on His business and in His name.

3)  Remember that this God is instructing you, and warning you, and treating with you, about no less than the saving of your souls. Come therefore to hear as for your salvation. Can that heart be dull that well considereth, that it is heaven and hell that is the matter that God is treating with him about?

4)  Remember that you have but a little time to hear in; and you know not whether ever you shall hear again. Hear therefore as if it were your last.  How would I hear if I were sure to die tomorrow?

5)  Remember that all these days and sermons must be reviewed, and you must answer for all that you have heard, whether you heard it with love, or with unwillingness and weariness, with diligent attention or with carelessness; and the word which you hear shall judge you at the last day.  (John 12:48)

6)  Make it your work with diligence to apply the word as you are hearing it, and to work your own hearts to those suitable resolutions and affections which it bespeaketh. Therefore be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing..

7)  Chew the cud, and call up all when you come home in secret, and by meditation preach it over to yourselves.  

8)  Pray it over all to God, and there lament a stupid heart, and put up your complaints to Heaven against it. The name and presence of God hath a quickening and awaking power.

9)  Go to Christ by faith for the quickening of His Spirit. Your life is hid in Him, your Root and Head; and from Him all must be conveyed; he that hath the Son hath life; and because He liveth, we shall live also. Entreat Him to glorify the power of His resurrection, by raising the dead; and to open your hearts, and speak to you by His Spirit, that you may be taught of God, and your hearts may be His epistles, and the table where the everlasting law is written.

10)  Make conscience of teaching and provoking others. God often blesseth the grace that is most improved in doing Him service; and our stock is like the woman's oil, which increased as long as she poured out, and was gone when she stopped.

With love,
Trisha