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The melancholy of all things done how to#Thank you for Jesus, whose work is finished, and for your Spirit, who knows how to apply it.Ģ. T hank you God that you have given them - given me - a far greater Savior than I could be. Only the Christ can do that, and it’s precisely what he came to do.Ĭonsider this prayer as you rise to address your people this week: It’s unavoidable that we carry those burdens into our pulpits, but it is not left to us and our sermons to deliver our people from those burdens. Of course, it’s essential that we bear the burdens of our people alongside them. There’s no denying our sermons will never be able give our people what they really need. There’s great freedom for us when we as preachers embrace that, too. And he not only accepts this reality-he embraces it. Here, though, he doesn’t want to talk about himself because he knows and loves the fact that he’s not the point. This isn’t an Obi Wan, these-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for evasive move. John isn’t trying to protect himself and deflect attention. But John’s answers only speak to who he’s not: “I am not the Christ” (1:20). The melancholy of all things done full#They probably expected a guy who was full of himself. They come asking, in essence, who do you think you are? They’d surely heard about his bohemian dress, his eccentric diet, his outlandish statements. The Evangelist doesn’t fill in many details of John’s style or his popularity, but given the way other writers describe him it’s not difficult to imagine what these Jewish leaders expected to find. We first hear John speak when the priests and Levites come down from Jerusalem for an up-close look at his ministry. There are three places the ministry of the Baptist shows up, and in each case there’s a message we need if we want to preach with confidence, freedom, and joy.ġ. The way the Evangelist describes the ministry of John the Baptist was incredibly helpful for me then-and it’s a perspective I’ve been seeking to grow into ever since. The melancholy of all things done series#Where can we find the perspective we need to keep pressing on? How do we learn to live with the fact that no sermon will ever measure up to the depths of our text, to the needs of our people, or to our ideal images of ourselves? What does success look like when you know your preaching will never be good enough?Ī while ago I was pressing through a season of discouragement in my preaching at the same time I was preparing for a new series on John’s Gospel. It’s a complicated burden and it can deal a deadly blow to ministry longevity. Some of it stems from the idol factories we nurture inside. Some of that is in the nature of the beast. Weekly preaching is a tremendous emotional, intellectual, and psychological burden we carry with us all the time. In more ways than I’d like to admit, I’ve been Joe. To whatever extent this description reflects your experience, your experience reflects mine. ![]() He carries that weight in his study all week it’s on his shoulders every time he steps into the pulpit. ![]() He knows what they need is so great and so specific to the circumstances of each one of their lives he can’t imagine how a single sermon could get the job done. More urgency while facing the problems in their marriage. More confidence in their faith that Jesus is true. He’s speaking into the lives of real people-people he knows and loves and desperately wants to help. He knows they need more perspective on the hard things in their lives. Joe knows from his pastoral care that his context is far removed from the class full of seminarians where he delivered his first sermons. But his sermons rarely feel like home runs.Īnd there’s more. Joe feels like he’s got to hit a home run to justify mediocrity in every other area of his job. Balls are dropping all around him so he can spend his 20 hours prepping.Īll of this amounts to a huge existential burden that each sermon has to carry. He believes that if everything else has to fail so preaching can go well it’s a worthy cost. But he figured if there’s one thing he can do well, it’s understanding and explaining the Bible in an engaging way.Īnd good thing too, he thought, because biblical preaching is the lifeblood of the church. He’s got bios of Spurgeon and Whitefield on his night stand.Ĭoming out of seminary, he knew counseling would be a challenge, that administration would take on-the-job training, that he knew little about effective marketing, that managing staff or volunteers wouldn’t be natural at first. He listens to Keller and Piper when he jogs. He loves study, organization, communication. It’s what drew him to ministry in the first place, after all. Just that of the range of things he knew he’d have to do once he started ministry, he figured preaching would come easiest. I don’t mean he had pretensions to glory, necessarily. ![]()
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