Luke 8 v 18. “Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him.”
To “consider carefully how we listen” means that we have to evaluate what we hear and do something with it. Many people profess to believe the Gospel but they never do anything with the Gospel. They never speak to others, sometimes not even to their children. How many parents do you know who would classify themselves as Christians, have some kind of distant or aloof relationship with the Church, but seldom attend, and never insist on taking their children to Sunday School or any other activities where they may hear the message of salvation?
That is very strange behaviour for a Christian person because the Christian message by its very nature is light. You cannot hide a burning lamp in a jar or under a bed! It is incongruous. The nature of light is to be seen and if you truly believe the Gospel you will be like a lamp on a stand. You will disclose everything you know about Christ to whoever will listen. Your life and behaviour will “bring out into the open” (v 17) all you can possibly share about Jesus.
In any event, whatever your relationship to Christ, it will be made known anyway. If you don’t belong to Him, you will never shine – and that will be revealed as time goes by. If you do belong to Him, then what may be temporarily hidden, will sooner or later come out because you cannot hide light!
The danger is that the person, who thinks he has the Gospel but never speaks of it, never lets it be known, may one day discover that the reality of the Gospel is not theirs, while all the time they lived with a false assurance that all was fine.
They claimed to have the Gospel but the truth is they never really did have it.
If you know Christ as your Saviour you should leak the Gospel. It should be seen all over you and dripping out of you. You cannot keep it a secret. That is why you should consider carefully how you listen. You may listen and think you have it, but lose out eternally because you never really embraced it, or you may listen in such a way that your very life is gripped by it and even if you had to try your hardest, you cannot stop it being seen in you, because you have been taken over by “light”.
The children’s chorus says, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine”. This is true as far as it goes but the greater truth is “This little light of mine, I cannot stop it from making me shine”.