More Wisdom for Preaching

The gospel breaks barriers.

Rev. Ingersoll talks about how when he started out at King’s Church at the young age of 29, he was worried about what he might have to say to people who were very different than he was. But what he found was that, if he was presenting the word of God, it cut through all sort of barriers. 

It is a blessing and burden to preach the word of God.

The things that mean the most often cost the most. “Preaching is an unbelievably meaningful endeavor,” he says, “but it will cost you.” It is a labor of love that not only brings joy but will also require sacrifice. There’s the cost of time. There’s the cost of practicing what you preach. There is the cost of friendships with those who might be offended at your message.

The goal is to leave an impression not to be impressive.

It can be a real temptation for a preacher – especially when one’s skills as a preacher are widely recognized and complimented – to begin to think he or she is impressive. Whenever God has gifted us at something or we have worked hard to develop a recognized talent, the devil will tempt us to think that we are something. 

But the preacher must focus on what God wants to say to his people, not how much the congregation will love us or our sermon. He mentions a friend who always prays before he preaches that the congregation will never think more of him than they think of the Lord. God must always increase with us his servants.

Anointing trumps skill every time.

No matter what skill a peacher might have, nothing can substitute from an anointing from the Lord. An anointing is when the Holy Spirit pours over you, empowering you to say words beyond what you would have otherwise said or been able to say. We are not all-knowing. We do not know all the needs of our congregation. We do not know what words will touch someone exactly where they need a word from the Lord. But the Holy Spirit does.

To create a fertile soil for the Lord to use you, you should always be bathing your sermon with prayer. We pray for the Spirit to empower and speak through us. We pray for the time of the sermon to be a sacred time and the place of receiving to be a sacred space. We are the clay, and the Lord is the potter to mold us as preachers into what he wants us to be in this sacred moment.

God does the heavy lifting.

God always knows infinitely more than we do. God’s power is infinitely beyond our power or eloquence. We can preach a flawless sermon from a human perspective and have no appreciable spiritual effect. And we can preach a thoroughly flawed sermon and the whole congregation be moved. How many times has someone told a preacher how helpful something said in the sermon was only for the preacher to realize he or she intended nothing of the sort? Without the Spirit at work, our preaching is but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.