Ever wonder why some people never seem to grow up in Christ? Why they never mature spiritually? They come to church faithfully every Sunday for one-hour and hear great sermons. In fact, the sermons they hear teach the Word powerfully. And let’s assume that folks who attend church faithfully every Sunday, live good moral lives and help others, but they are still babes in Christ. How is that possible?
It’s not enough... one-hour on Sunday. Not even close. Hearing the Word is only part of what a Christian must do to be firmly grounded in Scripture and know what it really means to have an active and vibrant faith.
A few years ago, the Pentagon commissioned a study to determine the impact of hearing information, the rate of memory imprinting and rate of failure to recall. It showed that the average person forgets 90 to 95 percent of everything we hear unless we write it down—we forget everything we hear in less than 72 hours unless we write it down. Those statistics will depress any preacher. It simply means that great hard hitting teaching sermons packed with spiritual gems, are all but forgotten by the middle of the week... unless the audience is in the habit of taking notes... writing something down.
It's no surprise to any Bible teacher, especially a pulpit preacher, that we now have a generation that knows absolutely nothing about Scripture. Our parents' generation, mostly a bygone age, knew a significant amount of Scripture. Baby Boomers know a little bit less, but still a significant amount about Biblical teaching because they were raised by people who were passionate about the Word. The next generation, the Baby Busters, knew even less; and the Millennial Generation knows nothing. They know more about Lady GaGa, current fashion trends and stuff on the Internet; but they don't know who the apostles are; they don't know the books of the Bible or even how many there are!
They don't know basic Bible stories. If you mention the Book of Job, the story of Job or the story of Noah, there are a lot of people in America who don't know who Noah is and wouldn’t know how to pronounce the name “Job” properly. They certainly don't know Scripture. Many churches have gotten away from the habit of Scripture memorization, which is the most important spiritual discipline for a Christian. Want to see the power of God working in your life? Memorize hundreds of verses over time and watch God bring them to mind when you need them— in witnessing, when faced with temptation and carnal thoughts, in the challenges of everyday life. If you don’t consistently and repeatedly feed your mind with Bible verses, you can’t recall them... because it takes more than occasional hearing to get them firmly rooted in your memory.
So this should come as no surprise... you can consistently attend Sunday worship services your entire life and still be carnal, cranky and judgmental. You don't witness, you don't live a godly life and you are not at all Christ-like. For “one-hour” you “hear” the Word preached but forget most all you heard by the middle of the week. That means you could sit in church for 20, 30 or 40 years, hear good preaching and teaching, and it doesn't change the cornerstones of your personality.
Preaching is not enough to make disciples of Christ. Preaching the Word of God is critically important, but insufficient because it only goes through the “ear gate” and people learn in different ways and at different paces. Some people learn through the “eye gate”—they like to read; some through the “mouth gate”—they like to discuss; some people learn through the “hand gate”—they're kinetic [doing, working] learners. To truly ingest the Word of God, rooting it deep into the mind and heart, it takes a total collaboration of our entire physical being to engage the learning styles that will ensure we absorb and retain what we hear, read, see, discuss and do.
Growing in Christ requires hard work. It’s a life long process... a 24/7 total commitment of mind and body to get beyond ourselves and become what God wants us to be. If all you think you need is to attend Sunday worship services for one-hour each week, you will never know how to feed yourself. You have to be fed by others. Hebrews 5:12 says, "...by now you ought to be teachers and yet you have to be taught again...." (1 Corinthians 3:2; 14:20; Hebrews 6:1; 1Peter 2:2)
So now you know that going to church one-hour a week is pretty much worthless, if you think that level of commitment will change you. You much commit to developing the habits of spiritual discipline—the spiritual discipline of prayer, the spiritual discipline of memorizing Bible verses, the spiritual discipline of witnessing and sharing the gospel.
The Bible says at James 1:22... "Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, so deceiving yourselves...." (Luke 6:46-47; James 2:14)
In review... let’s be honest, many Christians are guilty of being hearers of the Word only. We “hear” great messages that are quite interesting and we hear a lot of Bible background. We hear a lot of theology. We hear a lot of Scripture. We hear a lot of word terminology... but the key to “all we hear” is recorded at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:24-26 when Jesus said... "Now if you put this into practice, if you do it, now you build your house upon the rock. But if you just listen [hear] to it, you've built your house on sand."
