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Sermon Prep can be grueling and not always a spiritual experience.
So, you prayed deeply at the beginning of your sermon prep process. You asked the Lord to give you a text.
You picked up your Bible and read if for the passage, book, testament, author, and full Biblical context.
You referred to commentaries and Bible dictionaries to fill in what you couldn’t figure out from the text alone.
You listened to what other great preachers and scholars had to say on about the text under consideration…
Then you assembled all these pieces together into a nice sermonic package.
After that, you stood up before the people of God to preach a message of power…
And then, guess what….
You grab another thought for another sermon and get back on the sermon preparation treadmill again.
Sermon to Sermon…week to week…
And you feel empty…
You want to meet the God you preach about every week.
What’s going on?
One of the problems preachers have is we often only read the Bible and only pray for what we can preach and teach to others.
We study for what we are gonna say to somebody else.
But Sister or Brother Preacher…did you feed your own soul?
You pray to get help for the sermon, but did you pray about the help deal with your own hurts and pains and needs.
Preachers often pray and study to help others, but never get around to praying and studying to help themselves and their own families…
One of my former pastors, Eric Calvin Ward, would often pray, “Lord, save us with the same Gospel we preach to others.”
Let me ask you a question…
How can you know that your sermon will touch SOMEBODY?
The only way to know for sure is that it touches you…
Think about it…
You can’t know if it really affected somebody else…but you can know if it affects you.
You know that your sermon has “stepped on some toes” If it stepped on yours…
You know that your sermon has applied the balm of Gilead to the wounds and hurts if it is applied to yours…
You know your sermon actually has the imprint of God on it because God uses it to touch your soul.
No…I ain’t saying just preach for and to yourself…
But I am saying INCLUDE your own self in the congregation that needs a word…
Today, I ask you to get that sweet-smelling Gospel warm from the oven in heaven and take a bite before you tell others how good it tastes…
That’s all preaching is…Tasting it and saying, “Come on yall Taste and see, Ain’t God Good.” Psalm 34:8.
This week, as you prepare to preach….
If you ain’t shouted in the preparation room….then stop trying to force somebody else to shout in the sanctuary….
If it ain’t brought a tear to your eye in your practice of the sermon, then stop trying to extract it out of somebody else’s during sermon presentation…
Preacher…make sure it touches you…
Maranatha,
Brother Sherman
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