So, I just posted my two most recent sermons (see below), and I feel the need to write a bit about sermon writing, sermon sharing, etc.
Sometimes (often?) I write a sermon that I am not very excited about. Maybe I never felt it gelled, maybe I felt distracted while writing it, or maybe I'm just not sure it makes any sense. It's not a great feeling to be driving to church on Sunday morning thinking your sermon will be boring, or so-so, or just plain bad.
But here's the thing...often, it's those sermons that people seem to appreciate the most. This can only be attributed to the Holy Spirit, because I know it's not just me writing those things, and it's not just me preaching them either. I'm frequently surprised by people's reactions to my sermons, whether it's that they really liked one that I didn't, or that the one sentence that rocked their world was something I barely thought about when I wrote it.
And now, by popular request, I'm posting my sermons to this blog, in all their un-edited glory, and that's a whole other layer of vulnerability. The grammar and punctuation is not perfect. A sermon is written to be preached, not to be read on a page. And yet, people seem to want to read them, and I think it's only right to post them just as I wrote them. I often want to make excuses for the way they are written, or encourage people to imagine me preaching while they are reading them, but really, they are what they are, and I suppose if I trust the Holy Spirit to help them make sense when people hear them, then I should also trust Her to get the point across when someone reads them on the screen.
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