Maintain a posture of humility and submission to the Word. We can easily get distracted or think, “I know this already!” when a common passage is preached. We are always under the authority of God’s Word and our focused listening and submission to His Word will serve as worship to our God. Apply truths from the message to yourself—and write them down. We don’t want to be top-heavy Christians–that is, have disproportionately big heads from Bible knowledge but a small body from not walking it out. 

“Pay attention to what you hear.”
Those were Jesus’ words to his followers shortly after sharing the Parable of the Soils in Mark 4, a parable that explains the different results of Word proclamation.
In that parable, some hear the Word, only to have it snatched away by the devil. Others do not receive the Word due to tribulation on account of the Word or are choked out by daily life and the cares of this world. The ones who hear the Word and accept it are the only ones to bear fruit. As believers, we are to pay attention to what we hear so we can bear fruit of “thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20).
How we listen to and receive the preached Word will greatly impact our Christian maturity and fruitfulness. 
Jesus wants us to be active listeners—men and women who work hard at understanding God’s Word with their minds and applying it to their hearts. This truth can be applied in many different settings but perhaps none more obvious than from the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
On any given Sunday, there are countless distractions that can hinder a hearing and receiving of the Word: crying babies, a bad night’s sleep, thoughts from earlier in the day, or a short attention span. This is not to mention the spiritual war taking place as the Word is preached. That is why gospel proclamation is part of the armor of God (see Ephesians 6:15, 19). It advances the cause of God against the enemy.
How can we best listen to a sermon so we will receive the Word of God?
15 Practical Tips for Receiving the Word
1. Prepare your heart in prayer. Pray to have listening ears and that the Spirit would sow the Word into your heart. Confess your sin and examine yourself to see if any cares of the world might be choking out your desire to receive the Word and obey it (Mark 4:18-19).
2. Pray for the proclamation of the Word. Pray for your pastor to faithfully proclaim the Word in the Spirit’s power. Pray that the congregation would be challenged, instructed, and built up from the preaching of the Word.
3. Read the passage to be preached before the service starts. This is done preferably at home to set your mind on the eternal truth you will receive during the message. Humbly pray over the passage for the Spirit’s illumination and help applying it.
4. Prepare your mind and body for receiving the Word.
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Whether or not a person knows exactly when it happened, there is always a moment in the secret place of the soul when a person who is saved went from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive, separated from Christ to joined to Christ (Ephesians 2:1–7).

Molly Worthen’s Salvation
Recently I listened to a fascinating interview on Collin Hansen’s podcast, Gospelbound.1 It was a ninety-minute conversation with Molly Worthen, a journalist and tenured history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over many years, Molly has written as an outsider about evangelical Christians and, when doing so, has sometimes been accused of being “snarky” and having little sympathy for her subjects.2Then recently she was asked to write an article on J.D. Greear and the Summit Church.3 She began talking to people at the church, visiting the church, and sat down to interview J.D. Over time she felt herself increasingly drawn into the church and began an email correspondence with Greear to get her more personal questions about faith answered. She asked him for recommendations of books to read and began reading the books he recommended:
I found myself more than 51 percent persuaded that the Christian account of the resurrection is the best account we have. But I couldn’t believe that a person could be converted by reading a lot of books…I was praying for some sort of warm and fuzzy mystical intervention, and it didn’t happen. I just got to the point as a consistent pragmatist that I had to admit I had gotten over that line of the resurrection being the best explanation for the historical evidence, which meant I had to change my working hypothesis of the universe. That weekend I switched from praying, “God show yourself to me,” to “Jesus, you are my Lord and Savior.”4
“Is my conversion real?” she asks. “You don’t hear about a lot of people saved through reading a lot of footnotes…But I have this longing to read Scripture—especially the Gospels—that I never had before, and I think, ‘That is not me. That is new.’”5
Isn’t it interesting how God saves people? And whom God saves? And how he changes them? It’s often the people we least expect and in a way we would never expect. Some people hear the gospel and immediately take hold of it, while others spend a lot of time considering the claims of Christ and gradually come to faith. Some people have a profoundly emotional experience, while others feel very little. Some experience immediate deliverance from sinful impulses and patterns, while others spend a lifetime seeking to put certain sins to death. But there is one thing that is always the same. No matter who it happens to or how it comes about, salvation is always a supernatural work of God in which blind eyes are opened, giving a person the ability to see who Jesus is and the faith to trust him.
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Written by J. Drew Tillman |
Monday, September 2, 2024
A third point for Spurgeon was unity, especially unity among minsters of the gospel. In a day with much division, Spurgeon’s point is a good reminder. He said, “Whenever the foot is at enmity with the hand there must be something like madness in the body; there cannot be a sound mind within that frame which is divided against itself.” And elsewhere, “If there be among us any remnants of the spirit of division; if there be aught in us that would make us excommunicate and cut off brethren, because we cannot see with them in all the points of the spiritual compass, though we agree in the main; if it be so, then there must be somewhere or other an unhealthy disease. . . . Oh my heart longs to see a more thorough union among the minsters of Christ Jesus.”

In 1860, Spurgeon spoke to the London Missionary Society and expressed a desire for fruitful missions. He titled his talk “Peace at Home, and Prosperity Abroad.” For Spurgeon, successful missions started with healthy local churches. He asked, “What are the points which constitute the healthiness of the church at home?” His answer:

Purity of life (conversion) confirmed through membership examination;
The soundness of the gospel (sound doctrine);
The saved bond of brotherhood (unity);
Constant activity (devoted to good works);
Abounding in prayer.[1]

Perhaps he could have added four or six more, but these points are certainly a good place to start if we want to see a local church become healthier.
1. Purity of Life (Conversion) Confirmed Through Membership Examination
Spurgeon believed saints should be “sufficiently distinguished from the world” and “in our purity—and in our purity alone—we stand.” How is a church “pure” and distinguished from the world?
Conversion. This view was consistent in Spurgeon’s preaching. In another sermon, Spurgeon said, “An unholy, unregenerated church can never be the pillar of the truth. If there be a failure in vital godliness, if humble walking with God be neglected, the church cannot long remain a healthy church of God.”[2] He preached, “If we take into our churches those who are not converted, we swell our numbers, but we diminish our real strength.”
For Spurgeon, true success was not measured by numbers alone but “our success in a measure depends upon the vitality, healthiness, and godliness of each individual.” Spurgeon knew that unconverted individuals impacted the rest of the body.
Those tempted to compromise biblical membership for the sake of numerical growth should listen to Spurgeon’s caution: “We have not brought the world up to us; we only brought ourselves down to it. We have not conquered the world; we have only yielded to it. . . . We have brought the chaste spouse of Christ to commit fornication among people.”
How can churches work to be sure her members are Christians?
For Spurgeon, the answer is simple: careful membership examination. He preached, “We cannot possibly be too strict in the examination of those who are proposed for church fellowship.”
Regarding membership, Spurgeon sought to combine the mildness of the Savior’s mind and the love of the Spirit with a stern firmness. This means churches should work hard “with the most prudent discretion in maintaining the purity of discipleship.” We guard conversion “when we are engaged in the acceptance or rejection of candidates for the fellowship of the visible church.”
Furthermore, pastors should labor in our membership examinations. He concluded this point of health with these words,
That God might grant to each of us, who are the pastors of the church, that unceasing vigilance and constant watchfulness whereby we shall be able to detect the wolves in sheep’s clothing, and whereby we shall be able to say calmly, sternly, yet lovingly, to those who come before us seeking communion, without satisfactory evident that they belong to the living family of God, “You must go your way until the Spirit of God hath touched your heart, for until you have received the living faith in Jesus, we cannot receive you into the number of his faithful ones.”
2. The Soundness of the Gospel (Sound Doctrine)
Is the gospel faithfully preached? Is sound doctrine affirmed and celebrated? If not, a church might be headed toward hell rather than health. Spurgeon said, “Alas! If her doctrines be tainted, her faith will not be maintained, and the church being unsound, can tell what next may occur.” Spurgeon held true to this conviction throughout his preaching. In another sermon he said, “A healthy church kills error, and tears in pieces evil.”[3]
While he was an unflinching defender of the truth, Spurgeon also sought to be charitable and to seek unity around vital truth.
He mentioned the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate as an example:
I should be prepared to go a very long way for charity’s sake and admit that very much of the discussion which has existed even between Arminians and Calvinists has not been a discussion about vital truth, but about the terms in which that vital truth shall be stated. . . . When I have read the conflict between that mighty man who made these walls echo with his voice, Mr. Whitfield, and that other mighty man equally useful in his day, Mr. Wesley, I have felt that they contended for the same truths, and that the vitality of godliness was not mainly at issue in the controversy.
Now, these words might sound strange because elsewhere Spurgeon is clearly dogmatic about Calvinism.
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