PREACHING

I preached yesterday. What a surreal experience to be back in front of a crowd, speaking about God. Over the years I’ve become so familiar with the excitement of preparation, the subtleties of reading a crowd, the spiritual atmosphere when you feel people turning their hearts over to God, but in the past three months I’ve done no teaching. Weird. I feel like God wants to fill me up till I burst here and I have no way to express what he is doing. I fear forgetting or losing what he’s doing. Or maybe he’s refining what’s in me so when I’m done what comes out is only my heart. I hope so.
Maybe there’s something to that, God refining us so the words that escape our mouths reflect him, because he has shaped our hearts so. In preaching there can be a confidence in the material or an excitement about the performance but rarely is there a peace about the whole event. I think God wants to give us peace when we speak about him. A peace that’s not rooted in preparation or cleverness of delivery but one that transcends the event itself speaking to the speaker, “you are my child.” I hope so.