After You’ve Heard a Sermon

It is a most profitable practice, after you have heard a sermon, to confer with some fellow Christian who also heard it, and run over all the particulars of it that you can retain in your memory. Then go away and pray them over again; that is, make them the content and substance of your address to God. Plead with him to instruct you in the truths that were mentioned; to incline you to perform the duties recommended and to mourn over and mortify the sins that were reproved; to teach you to trust and live upon the promises and comforts proposed, and to wait and hope for the glories revealed in that sermon. Let this be done frequently afterwards in the same week, if the sermon be suited to your case and condition of soul.

– Isaac Watts, A Guide to Prayer, 74.