Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

Weightless Sermons

Albert Mohler on preaching:

The sheer weightlessness of much contemporary preaching is a severe indictment of our superficial Christianity. When the pulpit ministry lacks substance, the church is severed from the word of God, and its health and faithfulness are immediately diminished.

Many evangelicals are seduced by the proponents of topical and narrative preaching. The declarative force of Scripture is blunted by a demand for story, and the textual shape of the Bible is supplanted by topical considerations. In many pulpits, the Bible, if referenced at all, becomes merely a source for pithy aphorisms or convenient narratives.

The therapeutic concerns of the culture too often set the agenda for evangelical preaching. Issues of the self predominate, and the congregation expects to hear simple answers to complex problems. Furthermore, postmodernism claims intellectual primacy in the culture, and even if they do not surrender entirely to doctrinal relativism, the average congregant expects to make his or her own final decisions about all important issues of life, from worldview to lifestyle. Continue reading Weightless Sermons

Why the Psalms are Helpful

One of the reasons why the book of Psalms was written is to give us a Biblical template to express grief, discouragement, complaint, anger and the whole gamut of human emotions. It’s as if God is saying, “Go ahead and tell me your predicament. Your feelings don’t shock me at all. I’m listening and I care.”

Other uses of the book of Psalms include the following:

Prophetic- many Psalms are prophetic in nature. Many descriptions of the Messiah come from the Psalms, like the one where He was to be pierced on the side and that he will not see corruption, i.e., He will be resurrected. Continue reading Why the Psalms are Helpful

Ten Commandments for Preaching

Sinclair B. Ferguson’s Ten Commandments for Preaching:

1. Know your Bible Better. Be a homo unius libri– a man with One Book. [If there’s ever a book that you need to master, it’s going to be the Bible, not the latest Patrick Lencioni or Larry Osborne bestsellers, as useful as they are.]

“As an observer as well as a practitioner of preaching, I am troubled and perplexed by hearing men with wonderful equipment, humanly speaking (ability to speak, charismatic personality, and so on), who seem to be incapable of simply preaching the Scriptures. Somehow they have not first invaded and gripped them.” Continue reading Ten Commandments for Preaching

Psalm 145 In a Mosque

On the door of the mosque in Damascus, which was once a Christian church—but for twelve centuries has ranked among the holiest of the Mohammedan sanctuaries—are inscribed these words: “Thy kingdom, O Christ! is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.” Though the name of Christ has been regularly blasphemed, and the disciples of Christ regularly cursed, for twelve hundred years the inscription within it has remained unimpaired by time, and undisturbed by man.

The inscription was not discovered during the long reign of Mohammedan intolerance and oppression; but when religious liberty was partially restored, and the missionaries were enabled to establish a Christian church in that city, it was brought to light.

Source: Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times (Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996).

Being Shaken by Suffering

John Piper on suffering:

Strange as it may seem, one of the primary purposes of being shaken by suffering is to make our faith more unshakable. Faith is like muscle tissue: if you stress it to the limit, it gets stronger, not weaker… When your faith is threatened and tested and stretched to the breaking point, the result is greater capacity to endure.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness (James 1:2–3).”