"The Heart is the Target" presents a model for developing varied and penetrating application in expository sermons. It helps preachers explore the rich applicatory potential of the biblical text and then drive the applications home to people’s hearts.

With biblical balance and pastoral wisdom, Dr. Murray Capill’s Living Application addresses the preacher’s vital task of serving the heart-transforming purposes for which God has given his Word. Experienced preachers are well aware of the pitfalls that pervade the terrain of application in preaching: moralism that imposes duty and guilt without grounding Christian living in the grace of the gospel; in reaction to such moralism, avoiding any application that calls listeners to repent and resist sin; fixation on behavioral change instead of piercing into the heart’s motives and affections; and speaking in vague generalities that float above our listeners’ concrete spiritual struggle, rather than following Scripture’s lead in bringing specific realistic, and diverse exhortations.

Living Application not only provides biblical and theological correctives to such errors and imbalances, but also offers practical guidance in the preparation processes that yield sermons that serve the transformative purposes for which God has given the Bible.