Author: Jojo Agot

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

Preaching With a Broken Heart

John Piper, on the biography of Charles Spurgeon, wrote about preaching with a broken heart:

Everyone faces adversity and must find ways to persevere through the oppressing moments of life. Everyone must get up and make breakfast, and wash clothes, and go to work, and pay bills, and discipline children and generally keep life going when the heart is breaking.

But it’s different with pastors—not totally different, but different. The heart is the instrument of our vocation. Spurgeon said, “Ours is more than mental work—it is heart work, the labour of our inmost soul” (see note 1). So when our heart is breaking we must labor with a broken instrument. Preaching is our main work. And preaching is heart work, not just mental work. Continue reading Preaching With a Broken Heart

Sermon Outlines

The preacher should be able to remember his sermon very well that his outline could be blown off the pulpit by the wind and he’s still able to preach the whole sermon without missing anything.

If your outline is so complicated and all your points are difficult to remember even if you’re the one who wrote them, you cannot expect the congregation to remember anything. You should be able to recall your outline as you go along. The less you rely on your notes, the more the people are likely to remember the sermon. You should labor to make your sermon simple and uncomplicated.

Firecrackers

The sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is a hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall

—Henry Ward Beecher

A sermon should have a clear purpose, a target. Like the rifle, it should be aimed carefully at the target to hit the mark. 

A Lamp and a Bible

A portion of William Tyndale’s letter to an unnamed prison officer in the castle where he was detained for 18 months until his execution in October 1536.

“…and I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study…

His verdict was sealed in August, 1536. He was formally condemned as a heretic and degraded from the priesthood. Then in early October (traditionally October 6), he was tied to the stake and then strangled by the executioner, then afterward consumed in the fire. Foxe reports that his last words were, “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!” He was forty-two years old, never married and never buried.”

Excerpted from John Piper’s Always Singing One Note- A Vernacular Bible

Cannibalism and World Missions

D. James Kennedy, in his book What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?, tells of an amusing story about world missions:

During World War II, on a remote island in the Pacific, an American G.I. met a national who could speak English carrying a Bible. “The soldier pointed to the Bible and grinned knowingly. ‘We educated people don’t put much faith in that Book anymore,’ he said.

The islander grinned back. ‘Well, it’s a good thing for you that we [believe this Book],’ he said while patting his stomach, ‘or else you’d be in here by now.'”