John over at Blogotional has lept back into our discussion on the nature of preaching. He claims to feel overwhelmed by the length of recent posts on the subject then hits us with one of his pithy statements that cuts to the heart of it all- “Listening and reading can only take us so far down the road to becoming, well, anything.” Thats what I love about him. John is of course right- and perhaps the main reason for our minor disagreement a while back is that I probably failed to be explicit enough about the fact that it is not preaching alone that transforms us, but rather preaching heard right and responded to appropriately by the hearer, and given life-transforming power by the Holy Spirit.
I do not believe that we can hear preaching correctly without actually doing something about it. The question every preacher and every listener should be asking is “So what?”. In other words, “Given what I have just heard what should I be thinking, saying or doing differently?”
That is the essense of our response to preaching.
Meanwhile, in response to my post from earlier today a commentator said “The world still needs godly preachers who live and preach the gospel.” He’s not wrong there. Please pray for me and other preachers that you know that the sermons our lives preach will be more eloquent than the ones we deliver on sunday mornings. May God grant us grace to live as we ought and preach as we ought.
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