Preaching Question of the Week: Where do you find reminders of God's love?

Dallas Willard writes that we preachers can tell if we are running dry spiritually by the kinds of questions we ask ourselves right after the worship service is over. When our first questions are, "How did it go?" or "What could I have done differently?" there is a good chance that we are running on empty. It's not because spiritually full preachers never preach bad sermons. They can and do. Rather, it's because those who have found their deepest satisfaction in Christ know that how the service or sermon goes depends upon God far more than it depends upon us. We should do our best, yes, but without God our best is never good enough.

Empty preachers are constantly attempting to fill themselves up with the assurance that the service went well - the preacher's equivalent of the schoolboy's good grade. Preachers filled to the brim with God's presence know that "successful" services are a poor substitute for the presence of God, who can be present in the poorest of services.

I admit, this word strikes at one of my most glaring weakness as a preacher. So often I look for satisfaction not in the love of God about which I preach, but rather, in preaching well about the love of God. How silly. How excruciatingly frustrating. My performance never satisfies, nor was it meant to satisfy that part of my soul that was meant for God alone. I remember a line from an old Switchfoot song, a prayer really, "God, let me know that you love me, and let that be enough." I don't pray that prayer nearly enough.

So the question of the week is this - Is this a struggle for you? If so, how do resist the urge to find your worth in preaching instead of in the God of whom you preach? Where in life and ministry do you find the best reminders of God's love?

Illustration-a-day: Chesterton

Some great one liners from one of my favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton.


"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank."

"Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian."

“Jesus tells us to love our neighbors and to love our enemies, because often they are the same people.”

"The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild."

Illustration-a-day: It's remarkable what people will drink when they are dying of thirst

Three weeks ago, Water for All missionaries from our own church traveled out into one of the driest, barren places in the country of Uganda. There they met with villagers whose bodies and souls bore the scars of decades of war. While the wars have ceased, the needs have not. Families in the area constantly struggle to acquire the most basic of necessities, clean water. This need for water not only shapes their daily routines – they sometimes walk miles simply to fill up their jugs with water – but it has formed their identity. The name of this village when translated into English? Thirsty.

While all of us have been thirsty from time to time, few of us have experienced that kind of thirst that brings one to the edge of death. When I first saw the photo that showed the mud hole these families use for their daily water supply I almost became sick to my stomach. We who have never lacked for water for probably a few hours likely could never bring ourselves to take a sip from that nauseating pool. I was reminded once more that it’s remarkable what a person will drink who’s dying of thirst.

With in just a few days, our missionaries helped the people drill a new well in the little village of Thirsty, Uganda. After two days of work, clean water began to flow and the people where so excited they gathered together and gave the village a new name which when translated into English means, “Place where the waters run.”

Illustration-a-day: To love at all is to be vulnerable

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Chapter 6