Preach a Sermon in a Nutshell

“To Preach The Lord’s Gospel Daily in Our Own Lives!”

A ‘Comment” yesterday mentioned “To Preach The Lord’s Gospel Daily in Our Own Lives!”, and it really inpired me.  I see that as the very crux of what the Christian faith is all about. Christianity is NOT about going to a seminary and learning to speak dead languages and grinding through reams of dead church history, – it IS all about living our belief 1 Peter 2:12  Live  such  good  lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your  good  deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. meaningfully and honestly.

• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!

And a living example is worth a thousand word sermon! We need a total mind-shift away from the old ‘sandwich service’ style of hymn, prayer,  sermon preaching from the last millenium, to something that is both relevant and meaningful to today.  I cannot do much good preaching inside a near-empty church, but I CAN do a lot of good, preaching by example to my neighbours, to my friends, and to everyone else who crosses my path during the working week.

• Live Such a Life

I have to live such a life, that others will see I have this Agape love to share and to pour out, and the conviction to keep on pouring it over every human transaction in which I am engaged. There is scripture that clearly teaches: “Love without deeds is meaningless”. So, to put God’s love in place, I need to LIVE out my sermons!

• Every Action is a Visible Witness
  

You can’t ‘logic’ somone into Heaven – you can only impact their life by meeting or witnessing to some need they have, and when they can see in your life that love in action which promises to meet their need, they will want you to share it with them – THAT IS WHEN you can witness to them; that is how to preach in this third millenium! That is the real way to share the  love taught by Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Preach With Power

How to preach with power;
Preaching with conviction;
How to know what to preach;
How to preach a good sermon; – these questions, and others like them are asked here all the time, so I now want to try and answer this point on how to Preach with conviction.

• Testify from Experience and Knowledge

For me, the conviction has to shine through from what I know, from what I have experienced, from what the Spirit is telling me now, today. When you testify, the conviction is there in your voice because of course you must believe your own testimony, and your listeners will recognize that conviction. You are telling what you KNOW! You are the ‘first hand’ witness.

• Conviction and Power From The Spirit

The other real source of power and conviction in your preaching is the Holy Spirit of God.  When you have prayed about what you are to speak on, when you have allowed the Spirit to illuminate your understanding of the scripture, then the power and conviction will be present and they will come shining through.

• The Power of Scripture

God will never argue against Himself, so if what you are saying is based on pure scripture, and is expanding from that, then you have the confidence that it must be right. You know how it goes; God said it, I believe it! If you are quoting scripture, you are quoting God.  I believe, along with Timothy [2 Timothy 3:16]All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness that The Bible is the inspired Word of God, and that is something you really can Preach with Conviction.

Preaching  Without  Notes is all to do with faith.  If you are prepared to step out in faith, and say; “OK Lord, I will do this”;  then you can do it.

• Prayerful Preparation

The method I use to preach without sermon notes is outlined in the post “How to Preach“. It simply consists in prayerful preparation.  It is outside of the scope of this post to talk about “What to Preach“; so we will assume that your subject is already decided. Now do this:

• Go into your quiet place and prayerfully contemplate the chosen subject/scripture.  If you give Him the chance, the Holy Spirit will put ideas into your mind that are pertinent to the subject – and He may suggest passages of scripture that further illustrate the point in hand

• Examine these ideas/passages as they are offered, and the subject will expand and become whole.

• Continue this process until the flow of inspiration dries up.

God treats each of us in a manner suited to our personal learning nature, and very much as individuals; so you may require many sessions over several days to get a complete “handle” on your subject, or you may find the whole sermon drops complete into your consciousness.

• The Rhys Method……..

I usually start at the beginning of the week by reading the allotted lectionary readings. There is always a common thread contained in the given readings and that decides the subject for sharing on Sunday morning. I need to have chosen the accompanying songs by Wednesday to allow the “musos” plenty of time to practice, so by the time that is done, the selected readings are digested and printed out for the scripture readers, and the order of service is set out, then the “bones” of the subject are already in mind.

• Relevant Material

I then use whatever “free” time I have during the rest of the week, and devote it to contemplation of the points already in mind. It is both surprising and enjoyable to find other little pieces of relevant material coming to mind during moments of mental free time, like in the shower, or waiting for someone, or whatever occasions there may be when the mind can be [prayerfully] open to suggestion.

• Be Spirit Led

I do not attempt to organise this material into a structured whole, but instead rely on the prompting of the Holy Spirit when I begin to speak. This allows some flexibility to “change direction” in mid flow as may be needed, and is truly a way to preach without notes.

Read on to find out more on how to preach without using notes and how to Preach with Conviction!

• The best way to preach, is by conviction, from the heart, in your own words, just testifying to what you actually believe, whenever somebody asks you. That is how to preach with conviction…..

• Sermons send people to sleep, they are at best, second hand opinion, and at worst, only words.

• Testimony is vital and believable – Why? – because it is what we have seen and believe, and therefore the conviction of truth can be heard in our voice. When we relate what happened to us, people can believe that as fact. When you share some truth of which the Holy Spirit has convicted you, you will be believed because the conviction will ring in your voice!  This is the evidence of the holy Spirit. That is How to Preach with Conviction.
  

So, How Do I Do That?

• If you have no set requirement for the theme of the day, then grab your Bible, and head for your quiet place and just ‘wait on Him’ until you are told [how to pray] what to do.

• If you are working to a set theme, like lectionary readings, just go into your quiet place with your Bible and start ‘meditating’ those readings. As you read a verse or a phrase, close your eyes and let the Holy Spirit of God illuminate it to your understanding.

• Follow each ‘train of thought’ thru to its end and the subject matter will be filled out and explained.

• Just keep doing this until you feel there is no more to be understood. It may take several sessions of quiet to get the whole message. Strive for Spiritual Excellence!
  

• Stop thinking about it and go on with your usual weeks activities until you feel to do it again.

• Come Sunday Morning; you stand up and relate your subject matter as you are led so to do.  I find that it seems to come out in the same order it went in.  I.E. The first major point revealed comes first, and then the second point, and so on….

• How to Preach without Notes. The above method works well for me – it just blows me away that I always get to the end of what I want  to say at exactly the time the service is scheduled to end – Hallelujah!

There it is – you just learned How to Preach!

Pray........

• You were just meditating, and some light suddenly fell on some scripture or some moral question………..

• Or maybe you were talking to someone about some thing and suddenly it all came clear to you…………. And you felt that you just HAD to tell about it.

Or, You will need to seek for conviction

• God treats us all as individuals, and He might talk to you in a dream, or words in your head, or in visions and pictures or when you are looking on His handiwork, e.g., a sunset, or when you are browsing thru His Word. It is the ‘still small voice’ that we really need to be very quiet and still to hear.

• If prayer can be defined as communing with God, then the conviction you seek will be found in one of the above types of  ‘prayer’.

What NOT to DO

• Don’t start ‘writing it down and constructing a sermon’ – if God wants you to preach He will give you the conviction to share and the words to express it!

• Don’t go looking up information, or reading ‘suitable’ books for inspiration. What happened to other people or in other places is irrelevant to your testimony and can only be second-hand when you tell it!

• Our God is creative, He is never stale or boring – He always has a fresh message if we are prepared to look for it.

• Do believe, that when He promised to ‘supply all our needs’, that He actually meant just that. Our need of something to share when we preach is no different from our need of food and clothing, and it is easy to trust Him for our ‘daily bread’ – Right?

The Structure of the Message

• The order you make your points is the same order that they are given to you – often it is simply following the relevant reading(s) verse by verse.

The Whole Service

• If you apply the same contemplative method to the whole service, you will easily find the appropriate songs/hymns to sing and the prayer subjects to use. If others choose the songs – you can rely on His Holy Spirit to guide them to select appropriate praise and worship themes.

• There you have it – the way to learn what to preach as you learn how to preach

Not Sermons!

• I have long believed that ‘Sermons’ are wrong, and that what God really wants us to do is ‘share’ with each other the truths and the convictions that are laid on our hearts by the Holy Spirit [1 Corinthians 14: 26.] 26 What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.

• I have stepped out in faith and put this to the test. My testimony is that whenever I have done this, I have been given the words to say, and the truth to share. It is significant, I think, that I always run out of words at the same time as the service is supposed to end.

• It is always a step in faith, because every time I have that fear that I will not have anything to say, and that I will  ‘dry up’, but God is faithful and He always gives me enough. Hallelujah!

Think about it – Andrew the “Fisherman”, and Peter the “Deny-er” didn’t go to theological college, or attend lay preacher classes for diplomas to learn how to preach, they just stood up and testified to what they knew about Jesus…….

When you are asked to preach, is when.

Where To Preach

• ‘Go Ye into all the world…….’ Is usually interpreted as, “head for the ‘Deep Dark Jungles’ of central Africa, or the wilds of the New Guinea highlands”.

• The plain truth is, ‘all the world’ starts outside YOUR front door!

• So be happy to preach wherever you may be, and whenever an opportunity offers.

So answering the questions, “How to Preach” and “When and Where to Preach“,  was really simple…………..