My wife and I were enjoying a couple of days between appointments in Kenya, Africa. Joining a tour group in a game preserve, we stood with our heads through the roof opening of a four-wheel-drive Land Rover as we admired the zebras, buffaloes, rhinos, gazelles, and giraffes.
Our driver-guide spotted a cheetah eyeing the landscape. "That cat is hungry," he said. "He'll make a kill soon." It didn't happen while we waited, but sure enough, a little later we saw the cheetah, its face dripping blood, tearing at a Thomson's gazelle. Hungry animals are vicious.
Eventually we found what everyone was looking for the lions. I counted 17 in all. The adults yawned lazily, their feet in the air as they dozed. The cubs playfully and presumptuously tumbled over their cousins, aunts, and uncles. Nearby, other animals, favorite lion food, grazed nonchalantly. Everything was peaceful because the lions were full. Well-fed animals are at peace.
If there's bickering on your "preserve," perhaps it's because your people are not well fed. Or if they're no longer showing up at feeding time, maybe they've become bored with the food. Buttrick insisted, "People are driven from the church not so much by stern truth that makes them uneasy as by weak nothings that make them contemptuous."
We must pray often this prayer of an effective preacher: "Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and nudge me when I've said enough." But where do we get that "worthwhile stuff? Previously we discussed the preacher's primary sermon resource, the Bible. A second resource is yourself.
Your sermon is your experience to date
At the close of a service aboard a ship, a sailor came to his chaplain. "That was a great sermon, sir," he said. "Tell me what makes you think so," invited the chaplain. The sailor replied thought fully, "It was great because it took some thing from your heart and put it in mine." What comes from the heart goes to the heart.
The lame man at the Temple gate asked Peter and John for money. But Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk" (Acts 3:6, NIV). Peter didn't give money because he didn't have money to give. But the words he spoke brought healing because he had Christ. Our business in preaching is bringing to our listeners healing through Christ. But we must have Him ourselves before we can give Him to others. There's nothing harder than trying to give what you don't have.
As preachers, our primary purpose in Bible study is not to find something to say to others, but something that changes us. We should read our Bibles, not so much as preachers on the search for a sermon, but as human beings in search of food for our own souls. This, in turn, is what makes a sermon appealing. We interest others by that which exceedingly interests us.
Activate your memory
A sermon is no more produced in the pulpit than a baby is produced in the delivery room. It's true the baby first sees the world in the delivery room, but the mother, intimately involved in its creation, has been carrying it around and thinking about it for nine months. The best sermons usually include ideas the preacher has been carrying around and thinking about for months—even years.
Not only is the sermon not created in the pulpit, it isn't altogether created in the study, either. The Bible study and other readings serve partially as pump primers to get what's already inside us to flowing. They bring to the surface what we already have within us but can't otherwise get hold of. As we study we open the doors and windows to our memory and invite out all that we have ever read and seen and felt.
Faithful filling—effective emptying
Recently I traveled in a country where nearly every house had a large container at one corner of the building for storing drinking water. Rainwater flowed down the roof, was piped into the tank, and from there into the house. In one house, I noticed that the pipe from roof to tank was missing. I peeked into the tank. It was still equipped for emptying, but not for filling. No wonder it was dry.
That's often the dilemma in preaching: you try to keep preaching while neglecting your daily devotional life. You're perpetually giving but have no way of receiving. No wonder your ministry feels so empty. You sit down and try desperately to prepare a worthwhile sermon, but nothing much happens. When we try too hard, the creative juices freeze in our veins.
Better to get most of your materials for preaching the way a maiden gets her lover. Don't go in search. Just be about your normal business of a faithful daily devotional life. Sermons will come to you.
More resources later.