Give Life to your Sermons by Intentional Living

Your life is in the pulpit with you

Fred Craddock said, “Not everything that’s in the Bible is in the Bible.”

That’s why we have, among other things, commentaries. The most helpful ones throw open the windows of history and culture casting more light on everything and everyone from Adam and Eve at the beginning to John and the New Jerusalem at the end.

Similarly, not everything that’s in your preaching is in the Bible. The life you live when you’re not preaching becomes a part of your life when you are preaching. You may or may not realize this, but your listeners will sense it.

Beyond the hours spent in the canyon of your study surrounded by walls of commentaries and podcasts of famous preachers and clever illustrations, it’s the life we live in the mysterious subterranean realm of the Spirit 24/7 that counts. 

No one has heard more of my sermons than my wife, Terri. I can preach to several thousand people on Sunday morning, but her response is more perceptive than others. She may say, “Today you seemed sad or angry, defensive or perhaps even inspired.” Usually, I had no idea.

Your Invisible Companion

I'm reminded of a music video for Coldplay's song "Everglow."

In the video, a skater glides out onto the ice, so graceful—turns, twists and twirls. But then something changes. Her moves become more extreme and gradually, more impossible. Eventually she floats there above the ice, defying gravity.

It dawns on you that she’s doing things that are possible only if she’s skating with another skater—who has been rendered digitally invisible.

It is generally accepted that somewhere around 95% of our brain activity is unconscious. The preacher, skating around the chancel, is wise to be aware that the words that are chosen are deeply influenced by invisible and often unconscious forces. Carl Jung believed that if God wants to speak to us, God has to use words that will, first of all, feel like our own words. How else could God come to us? Sometimes our thoughts are actually God’s thoughts. But then again, sometimes they’re not. Some of our words are delivered on angel’s wings. Others might be more of a sour, subconscious burp.

It’s unsettling how often, in the 5 minutes before I’m “up next,” a dark thought predicts that I’ll never be able to remember what I’ve planned to say, but that it won’t matter because what I planned to say is not worth hearing. Where do these thoughts come from

Yeast is Powerful Stuff

The subconscious constantly processes and filters everything we are exposed to, translating them into thoughts and impulses, some of which come from God, some of which come from the darker recesses of our unconscious mind. 

Paul wrote, A little yeast leavens the whole loaf (Galatians 5:9). Though he speaks about bad influences in the church, it goes for other things, too. The little things we do and don’t do carry a weight of influence that defies their apparent size. 

One time, the speaker at our men's retreat, Jerry Kirk, a Presbyterian pastor from Cincinnati, mentioned two practices that had become part of his daily discipline. Both have become yeast in my life.

The God-Sign

Whenever he saw a bird, he took it as evidence that God loved him and was actively working in his life. This was his "God-sign." It’s not like I’d never heard that before, but for some reason, on that occasion it carried a different kind of weight. So, I made my own choice—birds (I’m not especially creative). 

From what I can tell, it’s a Biblical practice.

But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you;
or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind.

Job 12:7-10 (ESV)

It may seem trivial, but when you think about it, assigning elements of the world (living creatures as well as other objects) to preach to you in-between the times of your preaching to others, might make some sense. If this sounds silly, all I can say is that when I run into people I haven’t seen for awhile, more often than not, they will update me on their God-sign. 

For them, life is a perpetual surprise party. They trust the Lord to surprise them with rainbows, butterflies, out-of-state license plates, clouds, lost coins, deer, number sequences (1111), red cars, mosquitoes, hawks… one high-schooler chose unicorns. Her rationally minded dad told her she should have chosen something more common. She replied, “Dad, unicorns are everywhere.”

If you assign some item (no matter how obscure) responsibility for revealing God’s presence, power and love, God is likely to use it. Wasn’t it Jesus who said, "Consider the birds of the air… Consider the lilies of the field?"

Like the dove that just perched on the narrow sill outside my window—just thirty-three inches away (I measured—it just hung there staring at me). It was a tiny flake of heavenly yeast carried on the wings of my God-sign.

I made this point while speaking at a retreat. The guest musician told me later that she thought it was the dumbest, shallowest thing she’d ever heard.

But on a whim, she chose owls. In the months that followed she poured herself into finding and reconciling with her estranged daughter. Later on, she told me that in one form or other, an owl appeared at every key moment right down to the owl someone had painted on the manhole cover outside the walk-up where she at last found her daughter. 

When you think about it, most of life is routine housekeeping so there’s a lot to choose from. For Brother Lawrence (1614-1691) the pots and pans of the kitchen monastery where he worked became his God-signs. His spiritual peace was infectious and his wisdom attracted crowds. Pieces of it were collected into a book that is still in circulation today as The Practice of the Presence to God. 

The preacher’s life is full of pots, pans, birds and a universe full of Holy things covered with Divine post-it notes. When you’re not preaching to others, let them preach their tiny sermons to you and to your subconscious guidance system.

Your Word I Have Hidden in My Heart...

Jerry Kirk also described his practice of scripture memorization. He wrote down passages on the back of business cards that he carried around. For me, it was another one of those moments when a mysterious voice said, “Do this!” 

I started collecting people’s business cards and writing down passages. Pretty soon I had a stack of cards to review for each day of the week. Once I got into the rhythm of it I thought, why not expand this a little so I added whole psalms and various chapters of scripture. Then, Philippians, the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of John and on and on. More and more yeast for the dough.

My mind is what people call a steel sieve—nothing stays in it for long. That’s why for me, memorization is a discipline, not a gift.

I must review my scripture chapters, books and verses two or three times a month or I’ll forget them. That means every single day I must redeposit a portion of that scriptural yeast into my deep, inner, subconscious memory vault. Heaven only knows how the Lord will use it.

There are No Rainy Days for Preachers

There's an old Amex ad that begins in a comfortable living room, a blazing fire, a steaming cup of coffee, peaceful music. Outside, gloomy clouds splatter the windows with a steady rain. In the background, a (at the time, familiar) voice says, "A rainy day is my chance to be home, be a fan, be a kid, be lazy..."

Then the eye of the camera turns its focus outside the window, and there in the dim light and rain, Tiger Woods (the voice) hits golf balls. The narrator sums-up “Problem is, there are no rainy days.” 

There are no rainy days for the preacher, either. Everything matters. Everything we do makes a deposit or withdrawal in our soul and will, for better or worse, animate the message. 

A friend of mine, Randy Wolff, once asked me to be the lunchtime speaker for Links Golf Fellowship, a gathering of Christian golfers.

The plan was to play nine holes, break for lunch and a speaker and then play the back nine. Randy, a former PGA golfer said, “Play in my foursome.” I hadn’t played golf for 5 or 6 years, but he insisted. I got there late. No time for practice on the driving range or putting green. Randy teed off first. Next, a man who’d just returned from a bone fishing trip with his golfing buddy, Jack Nicklaus. Then Randy’s son-in-law who was a scratch golfer. Finally, me. I whiffed—missed everything. And that was my best shot of the day because at least I could still find the ball. After that, I was always in the woods, across the highway, or in the water. It was utterly humiliating.

But we were playing by what’s called “best ball” rules where each player hits a shot and then the others hit their next shot from the location of where the best ball had been hit. That meant it didn’t matter if I was in the woods, across the road or in the water, I was always saved by their perfect shots.

In the end, I shot the worst round of my life, but I got the best score of my life because of my companions. 

I once heard of a man who was converted by the worst sermon he ever heard. Saturate yourself in the things of heaven and earth.

Let them be your companions. Give them access to the vault of your subconscious. Let them percolate and infect your inner world so that even when you’re not at your best, when a word from you is required, the word you choose will have the trademark of the indwelling Spirit of truth. 

Not everything in your preaching is in the Bible. Your preaching is full of you and you get to decide what that means when you preach!