Preach

This morning I spoke at Mill Creek High School about 2 miles from where I live. The most recent studies show Mill Creek to be the largest school in Georgia with over 4,000 students (Thank you Wikipedia!). A club called "Morning Manna" (See Moses and the book of Exodus) meets every Tuesday morning at 6:45. Tomorrow night I will preach at The Point @ 12Stone Church. No matter where it is I absolutely love to preach. It's the reason I'm in ministry. Along with having relationships with the people I'm ministering to, preaching is what fires me up about ministry.

In the 80's Oscar

 winning movie Chariots of Fire, the main character Eric, an Olympic sprinter makes the famous statement "When I run I feel God's pleasure." Well, when I preach I feel God's pleasure. Don't get me wrong.... it's not easy. Not ever. The Word messes with you in preparation, the Spirit convicts, and the Truth many times hurts. To this day I feel a mixture of queasiness, excitement, and extreme adrenaline rush before I step before a group of people to unfold and teach the scriptures. But it never ever gets boring!

When I was a kid in school (even in high school) I hated the thought of standing before a crowd and talking. In fact, I'd have much rather been strapped to a chair and had metal clips holding my eyelids open while being forced to watch a 10 hour long Justin Timberlake concert than speak in front of a crowd. A lot can change when the LORD grips your heart and (thankfully) refuses to let go. 

Preaching teaches you a lot. It forces you to pray more because there's no way you can share anything eternally significant relying on your own carnal strength and wisdom. It forces you to study because you need to preach as one who has authority. It forces you to repent because not to do so would be hypocrisy. It forces you to listen because the preacher who is worth his salt needs to know what the LORD wants to say and what the people desperately need to hear.

I'm reading a classic book on preaching right now called Preaching & Preachers by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It is both challenging me and blowing my mind. The following excerpts are a few that I've loved.

"Emotion is regarded as something almost indecent [in preaching] . My reply to all that, once more, is simply to say that if you contemplate these glorious truths that are committed to our charge as preachers without being moved by them there is something defective in your spiritual eyesight."

"But, if there is no power it is not preaching. True preaching, after all, is God acting. It is not just a man uttering words; it is God using him. He is being used of God."

"What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire. And theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or at least the man's understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.......I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit;and should never be allowed to enter one."

"Preaching is the most amazing, and the most thrilling activity that one can ever be engaged in, because of all that it holds out for all of us in the present, and because of the glorious endless possibilities in an eternal future."

So tomorrow I will take the platform again. After feeling a mixture of exuberance and intense nausea, I will ask the Holy Spirit to empower me and speak through me with words that only he can give. I will sweat like a horse in Haiti and spit like a sprinkler in a corn field. I have to. It's truly like a fire shut up in my bones. I pray that the LORD will show up in a huge way and that many lives will be changed by the Gospel. And maybe......just maybe.....we might even have fun!