Lesson 6: Preaching With Passion

Preaching with passion is preaching with feelings with reality in the preacher’s life. This means that not only that he feels the message but also lives with it. It is hard to preach when the things that you preach is not true to your life.

Preparing Yourself Just Right Before You Preach

It is very hard to preach when there is something bothering us at the back of our minds. Sometimes these things comes from our own homes. There are times that it was caused by circumstances and problems within your family, and there are also times that it was caused by outside factors. I enlisted here some of the causes of a pre-occupied mind.

• Lack of devotional / personal time with God. Being a messenger of God’s word compels us to study and know God’s word or else, we will never know what God is saying to us and to our church. And all the more that we need to devote a personal time with God in our everyday life.
• Lack of prayer life. If we cannot have a personal devotional life, then it is also difficult to have prayer life. Without a prayer life, our daily battles will always be a failure.
• Conflict with a friend or a family. From my experience, this is one of the most common problems with those whom I am training. It is very difficult to have conflicts against other people and all the more if the conflict is within your family especially if it is between the spouses. It would be hard for a husband to preach when he sees his wife frowning at the back seat.
• Problems. Problems may also cause us to have a pre-occupied mind. When we have problems, we cannot think well about our preaching because we are thinking about the solution for that problem.

On the other hand, here are the things that we can do if we are suffering from these delimmas.

• Enhance our devotional life and personal time with God. Just before anything else, we have to go back to the Lord and ask for forgiveness for our laxity in our spiritual life.
• If our devotional life and personal time with God has been enhanced, then our prayer life should follow. Our spiritual life as God’s messenger should be exemplified by our devotion and prayer life.
• Go back and resolve the conflict as soon as possible. And as much as possible, we need to settle all conflicts especially the one that pre-occupies our mind. Sometimes there are conflicts that is hard to settle at the very moment. In times like this, we need to pray and give everything to God and allow Him to move in the situation. Sometimes this will work, but there will be times that God will impress to you that you really have to settle it first before delivering His word. When you see the situation to be directing you in that way, then do it since it is always better to follow God.
• Be a positive thinker towards problems. There is no man that has no problem. For sure, each one of us have their own problems. But there will be times that our problem seems to be so big that it can preoccupy our minds. There is only one solution for this, that is to give everything to God including all your worries and allow God to work for it.

Reality of The Message To Our Own Life

I already have seen preachers where the reality of the messages that they are preaching are far from what they are living, but we will not be talking about that since the main purpose of this book is to present the positive things rather than focusing ourselves on the negatives.

It is very important that we will live what we are preaching. Just like the book of James tells us, the will “not become merely hearers but doers of the word” (James 1:22). Such work should be seen in the way we live that people around us can witness since we are surrounded by such a great a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1).

Here is a short checklist to ensure that what we preach is true to us.

____ Do we possess the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3?
____ Do we maintain good devotional habit?
____ Do we have a good prayer life?
____ Do we study well what we preach that we ourselves fully understand it?
____ Do we get more critics than commendation?
____ Can we safely and truly claim that we are living what we preach?

Allowing the Holy Spirit Move

In delivering your sermon with passion, there is no more than important thing than allowing the Holy Spirit move as you preach. In contrast to what some denominations are saying, moving of the Holy Spirit does not lie on the manner of people’s actions like speaking in tongues, laughing of the  spirit, and some other pentecostal way of worshipping.

In allowing the Holy Spirit moves, it simply means that we have to give to everything to God about our preaching. Do not hesitate to what God is telling you to say. As long as you stick to truths from the Bible, you are safe. Caution must be taken care of though. It is because there are times that we might misinterpret the moving of the Holy Spirit to our personal will to speak. And the big problem is that there is a very thin line between the claim of the moving of the Holy Spirit and the denial that it was spoken out of own’s will.

Here are some great resources that’s still on “sale”. You may want to grab it now.

Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church By Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. / Baker Preaching from the Old Testament receives short shrift in many pulpits. Kaiser shows you why and how you should preach from the OT. Emphasizing the relevance of the First Testament, this reliable guide offers practical insight into expository preaching and concrete suggestions on teaching the narrative texts, wisdom books, prophets, laments, and more. 222 pages, softcover from Baker.

Preparing Expository Sermons: A Seven-Step Method for Biblical Preaching By Ramesh Richard / Baker “The Bible is what God has made. Sermons are what we make with what God has made.” This is the foundation for developing expository messages, according to Ramesh Richard. His method has been field-tested in training seminars for thousands of preachers around the world. Richard’s book is a simple do-it-yourself resource for developing and preaching expository sermons. It guides the reader through a seven -step process, with many practical suggestions and illustrative charts along the way. In addition, there are eleven appendixes that include information on: how to choose a text; preaching narratives; understanding your audience; and forms of sermon introduction. A comprehensive sermon evaluation questionnaire is included as well. This book is an updated and expanded version of Scripture Sculpture, is ideal for beginning preachers, lay preachers without formal training, or any pastor who is looking for a refresher course in expository sermon preparation.

Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition By Calvin Miller / Baker Dr. Miller’s ability to craft words that capture the imagination of hearts has been apparent for a generation. He is rightly concerned that this new generation of seekers and sojourners is not connecting with the timeless truths of Scripture. He challenges preachers and pastors to learn how to connect with the current culture and shows how this is possible. Do you want to learn the art of storytelling from a master? Dr. Miller can show you.Preaching Magazine has honored Preaching: the Art of Narrative Exposition as the 2007 Book of Year. Dr. Calvin Miller is Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Ministry at Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, AL. He has written over forty books.