When Preaching Is Hard

Preaching is a funny thing. Sometimes preaching is easy. You feel the wind of the Spirit filling your sails, you know your words are presenting the Word, you have people's attention and you know that the Spirit is doing His work, carrying the Word into hearts, and feeding Christ to your listeners.

Sometimes, on the other hand, preaching just feels like hard work. I don't mean the strange act of standing up and talking in front of people, after a couple of years you get used to that, but i mean the actual preaching. You struggle for ideas, you struggle for flow, you struggle to expose the meaning with your words that you see with your mind. You see people's attention wander, you feel this unique opportunity slipping through your fingers. Maybe there's a long prayed for guest in attendance, and you him check his watch more often than make eye contact.

More often than not, preaching falls somewhere between these two on the spectrum, but what do we do when preaching is hard?

Remember that preaching is God's work not yours
Preaching the Gospel is not the Christian equivalent of teaching maths or geography. It's not a download of information from mouth to brain. It is a Spirit filled work. The Lord promised through Isaiah that His Word would not return to Him void, and so it won't. Sometimes that work is to harden, oftentimes that work is to soften and mold and convict. Sometimes it's our throw away phrases or our off the cuff applications that lodge in people's hearts. Preaching is God's work, not ours. We need to preach and trust that God is doing His work.

Remember that you're preaching God's Word not yours
The Bible is the first hill that orthodoxy dies on. And i'm glad. When we preach we don't go with our ideas, our thoughts or our knowledge. We repeat what has been entrusted to us. Whether we feel like great communicators, or that we may as well be talking in a different language, when the Word goes forth, preaching is done well. Sometimes it is hard work, your illustrations miss the mark, your points don't flow together as well as you thought they would. Things don't sound as good out of your mouth as they did when you typed them. That's ok. It's the Bible people need to hear, not ours.

Remember that God gives the growth not us
Apollos planted, and i watered, but God gave the growth. Amen. The growth of our listeners does not depend on our delivery, or sharpness, or style, it depends on God. Someone once said that preachers overestimate the difference one message can make, but underestimate the difference that long term, faithful preaching can make. Or something like that. Christian growth is incremental, Christian growth is by degree, and God grows, not us. God is doing things in our listeners that we can't even imagine.

We need to remember these things to keep our feet on the ground when we feel like we preach well, and we need to remember them for encouragement when we feel like we preached poorly. Remember preaching is God's Word, God's work and God's growth, and thank God that in a couple of days, you'll get another chance.