Praying for preaching

Mike Fabarez's "Preaching that Changes Lives" is an excellent reminder to preach with life-change in mind. For life-change to take place, prayer during the preparation, during the delivery, and after the sermon is over is essential.

"Plenty of naive anticipation has been dashed before noon on Sunday when a young preacher discovers that shiny accessories are no substitute for the power required to drive any sermon into the hearts and lives of our hearers. Without prayer, our sermons may look good on paper - they may even sound good in the pulpit - but you can be that they will never leave the church parking lot." (pg. 69)

1. Pray for the crafting of the sermon.

"Pray that the message you are preparing would be an evident part of your own life. Pray for the protection of your sermon preparation time. Pray that you will be given grace and illumination to rightly divide His Word. Pray that the words you choose to frame your outline would be effective tools for the Holy Spirit to employ. Pray that you would have insight into the needs of your audience as they relate to the sermon
you are preparing."

2. Pray for the delivery of the sermon.

"Pray that people will attend the preaching event. Pray that your audience willl arrive in the right frame of mind. Pray that God will guard against preaching distractions. Pray for clarity in your vocabulary. Pray that God will give your audience understanding. Ask God for the most effective and fruitful sermon you have ever preached."

3. Pray for the response to the sermon.

"Pray that people will put the sermon into practice. Pray that the sermon will not be compartmentalized. Pray that the application of the sermon will be contagious. Prayer that the sermon itself will be repeatedly 'delivered'."

Cultivating Gravity & Gladness in Preaching

John Piper's "The Supremacy of God in Preaching" is a compelling call to preach for God's glory. In it Piper offers these seven practical suggestions for cultivating gravity and gladness in preaching. (Note how different this council might be from popular, image-driven counsel, not to mention the very idea of cultivating gravity.)

1. Strive for practical, earnest, glad-hearted holiness in every area of your life. You can't be someone in the pulpit you aren't during the week.

2. Make your life - especially the life of your study - a life of constant communion with God in prayer. The aroma of God will not linger on a person who does not linger in the presence of God. Fruitful study and fervent prayer live and die together.

3. Read books written by those who bleed Bible when you prick them and who are blood-earnest about the truths they discuss.

4. Draw your mind often to the contemplation of death. Death and sickness have an amazing way of blowing the haze of triviality out of life and replacing it with the wisdom of gravity and gladness in the hope of resurrection of joy.

5. Consider the biblical teaching that as a preacher you will be judged with greater strictness. (James 3:1; Hebrews 13:17)

6. Consider the example of Jesus. He was as kind and tender and gentle as a righteous man could be...He never preached a careless sermon, and there is no record of a careless word.

7. Strive with all your strength to know God and to humble yourself under his mighty hand. (I Peter 5:6)

Deeper preaching

Someone told me they wanted "deeper" preaching. So here are four reasons why I don't preach deeper than I do:

1. One person's definition of "deeper" is another person's definition of "drowning." There is a spectrum of listeners in the congregation. There are people who don't know the books of their Bible, if they bring their Bibles. Just say the word "sanctification" and you have lost some. Others want a story or personal anecdote or more humor. A few want to know the Greek grammer behind the text - very few. If I were a swimming instructor, sure I could take everyone out to the middle of the ocean, but I wouldn't. I'm responsible for the novices as well as for those who think they are pros. Some think they're ready, others are scared of getting wet.

2. I thought I was already pushing the church's limit. Right now I'm on the last month of an eight-month, verse by verse journey through Philippians. To my knowledge, no one in the church's past has preached this long on a book of the Bible, and I've gone faster than I originally planned. I waited almost a year before I started because I knew it would be a stretch for many. Philippians has brought us face to face with one doctrinal truth after another. Sometimes defining a Greek word or giving some first-century context has been necessary. Stories aren't my forte and I preach for 45 minutes, so surely I am going somewhat deep.

3. I'm not seasoned or disciplined enough to go deeper. When I think of going "deeper" I think of pulling out all the truths and applications that lie within God's Word. There are wondrous riches there if we would linger longer over the text and the practical relevance to our lives is endless. The human heart is complex and cherished idols and thought-patterns are hard to overcome. I truly want to be a better surgeon (physician of the soul) than I am but I feel like I'm just beginning my pastoral ministry and I'm too scattered yet to meditate long over the Word and over the needs of the people as I should. I hope I continue to grow and mature and become the preacher my people need.

4. A friend, Wayne in fact, is fond of challenging the notion of going "deeper." He likens it to kneeling at the edge of a beautiful, clear, deep mountain lake. The peaks and clouds reflect on the surface. If you leave the shore to go "deep" you won't be able to breathe, he says, it is a foreign environment down there. But if you linger at the water's edge, looking intently and are faithfully attentive there, God will faithfully bring up from the depths what you need to see and hear and know. He says going "deeper" is often an excuse for ignoring and disobeying what we already see plainly. Until we are obeying what we already know, says Wayne, what is the benefit of more depth? I think Wayne is on to something.

Being told your preaching isn't deep enough or relevant enough or inspiring enough or humorous enough or whatever can be deflating. This is why ordinary pastors must live upon the cross and seek their praise and approval from God. It could be that God is using comments like that to prevent inflated views of ourselves. It works.

Fire and brimstone

"Do you preach fire and brimstone?" asked one of the senior members at church.

"What do you mean?" I replied. Was he asking if I preached about fire and brimestone of if I preached in a particular style called "fire and brimstone preaching"?

He clarified himself. "You know, do you preach on the consequences of sin?"

"Yes," I said, "I haven't preached a whole sermon on hell, but I I've talked about Hell as an eternal, literal place for those who reject Christ. I've probably said more about the wrath and condemnation sinners are under now rather than just the judgment to come. But, yes, I preach on the consequences of sin."

This conversation took place over the phone so I couldn't read his face. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't remember hearing you preach about Hell," he said.

That was basically the end of the discussion. Something about the way he asked made me think he was genuinely concerned I was avoiding the topic of Hell. I don't think that I have. Again, I haven't preached a specific sermon on Hell, but I don't think I've neglected the subject.

Regardless of his motives or concern or lack of memory, it did make me think about my preaching. Do I unconsciously shy away from talking about Hell? Do I somewhere deep down doubt it's existence or think it is less horrifying than it really is? Have I made the consequences of unbelief sufficiently clear? While we may not be "fire and brimstone preachers", pastors must warn our hearers of Hell and plead for their escape.

After-sermon-blues

I once thought after-sermon-blues were a sign of abnormality and that maybe I missed my calling. No one told me, "Even after your best preparation and your best delivery, you may feel like the worst preacher on the planet."

John Stott's admission freed me from lashing myself: "Seldom if ever do I leave the pulpit without a sense of partial failure, a mood of penitence, and a cry to God for forgiveness, and a resolve to look to him for grace to do better in the future."

Ahhh. So it's not abnormal. But what does a pastor do with those feelings of failure after he's preached his heart out? He takes them to the cross, where else? Here's D.A. Carson:

"It is rare for me to finish a sermon without feeling somewhat between slightly discouraged and moderately depressed that I have not preached with more unction, that I have not articulated these glorious truths more powerfully and with greater insight, and so forth. But I cannot allow that to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the gospel of grace, and God accepts us because of his Son." - Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, pg. 92