Preaching and the Spirit

One of my duties as the college pastor is to prepare and deliver weekly sermons for our college students. It is one of the most enjoyable parts of my job, but also one of the most difficult at times.

I have always felt that preparing a good sermon is a bit of a moving target. You might plan and pray a great deal and be very enthusiastic about your passage and yet still have the sermon fall flat. On the other hand, you might have a crazy week, with very little time to prepare, yet you finish the sermon with the certainty that the Spirit has spoken despite your failure (or perhaps because of it).

I was encouraged recently, upon reading a biography of Martin Luther, to run across a great quote about preaching that expressed well my feelings. In speaking to a young pastor who was discouraged about his sermons, which were often too short, and who expressed the opinion that he would be better off in his former profession (a familiar line of thought to those in vocational ministry), Luther said the following:

"Do your best. If you cannot preach an hour, then preach half an hour or a quarter of an hour. Do not try to imitate other people. Center on the shortest and simplest points, which are the very heart of the matter, and leave the rest to God. Look solely to his honor and not to applause. Pray that God will give you a mouth and to your audience ears. I can tell you preaching is not a work of man. Although I am old and experienced, I am afraid every time I have to preach. You will most certainly find out three things: first, you will have prepared your sermon as diligently as you know how, and it will slip through you fingers like water: second, you may abandon your outline and God will give you grace. You will preach your very best. The audience will be pleased, but you won't. And thirdly, when you have been unable in advance to pull anything together, you will preach acceptably both to your hearers and to yourself. So pray to God and leave all the rest to Him."

I certainly can't argue with that...what a great reminder of who is truly in control of the preaching process.

(By the way, that quote is from an excellent biography of Luther entitled Here I Stand by Roland Bainton. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in the subject.)