I have a confession to make. Are you ready? Okay here goes: I write out my grocery list while our pastor is preaching nearly every Sunday morning.

It isn't that my pastor is boring or that I don't like his preaching; he isn't and I do. It's just that about the time he finishes his introduction (which is usually about 10 or 15 minutes) I'll remember that I'm out of garbanzo beans and consequently I'll also remember that I need cumin too. So I'll take the little communication card out of the bulletin and write just those two things down. But then a billion other items pop into my head and I figure that I might as well write those down too. My husband Brian gives me pointed looks when he sees me doing this, so I have to be pretty covert about it.

I know I'm being a bad listener when I do it, and I feel guilty for a few minutes but then I forget about it and repeat the same scenario the next week.

Yesterday Tim Challies had a good word for me and all you other closet during-church-grocery-list-makers out there in his blog post "Being a Diligent Listener." He begins by posing some good questions about our responsibility to participate in the sermon

While a pastor bears great responsibility in preparing for and delivering the Word of God each Sunday, the listener shares in the responsibility. The church has no place for an audience. We are all to be involved in the preaching, even as listeners. We may drive home on Sunday muttering about the pastor’s lack of preparation after a less-than-engaging sermon, but how often do we drive away reflecting on our own lack of preparation? How often should we trace our lack of learning or our lack of engagement right back to our own lack of preparation?

By making my grocery list I'm tuning in and out of the sermon the same way I would a dull lecture or a bad theater performance. My pastor, while a great speaker, is not orating to entertain me. He's preaching God's word to equip the saints and so to build up the church, Christ's body. When I think about it this way, if I'm not diligently listening to God's word preached I'm eventually going to become a sickly, or at least weak, part of our church's body.

As Challies points out, the problem probably isn't so much my attention span as it is my lack of preparation. For the last seven weeks we've been leaving for church an hour and a half earlier to attend the new members class. And with each week I've gotten up a little later and have let my Sunday morning Bible reading go. My husband prays on our drive to church and lately that's been the only preparation I've had for Sunday worship.

I'm thankful that God is tendering my heart about all of this and I know I've got some repenting to do about how I approach Sunday worship. And because God desires true repentance from his children, not just vain guilt like I've been offering up about the grocery list, I'm making a plan for how I can be more prepared for the preaching of God's word this coming week.

Here a couple of the things I've thought of:

• Since my church is preaching through the book of Philippians, I'm going to read Philippians on Saturday and Sunday and break from what I'm reading in the Bible the rest of the week.
• Talk to my husband about setting aside time at breakfast on Sunday morning to pray for our pastor, small group leader and members, and church as a whole.

Challies also has some great suggestions to prepare for and apply our pastor's sermons. I'd love to hear how you prepare your heart as well. What are some things that you do alone and with your spouse in preparation for Sunday?