Preaching
PREACHING EVERY WEEK
It's not easy. It's like every week you have to go on a new journey in order to discover a new spiritual state of being in order to come back to the ordinary and deliver that extraordinary discovery to people who have not been on the journey that you've just taken through thoughtful prayer, study and writing.
The journey into writing a good sermon requires the conflict of facing evil and maybe, in a way, even your own death before you can rise out of the ashes into something more glorious and beautiful. But it's really hard to explain what you just experienced when you take it back to people who have been in what they see as their ordinary life this whole time. This is especially true when you only get about a half hour to tell your story in such a way that they realize that it's actually their story too and their story isn't as mundane as they thought. Their story, like your story, is extraordinary and it took your sacrifice of going on the journey before them to reveal this glorious truth.
So on Monday morning the door to your office opens and you are invited to journey back into the wonderland of grace and you say yourself, "not again!" But that's your job. Start the journey again and come back to tell your people what you will have discovered. It's not easy, but it is amazing.