Those of us who counsel pastors and teach future preachers sometimes caution them to “study the Bible for itself, just to receive the Word into your heart, not to prepare sermons.”

We might as well tell Sherlock Holmes to enjoy crime scenes for the beauty of the occasion and stop looking for criminals, tell Albert Pujols not to worry about actually striking at the baseball crossing the plate but to relax and take in the inspiration of the moment, or tell Joan Rivers to give up on plastic surgery.

Some things you do because this is who you are.

When a pastor reads a great insight in the Scriptural text, does anyone think for one minute that he is going to file that away in a personal-edification file, never to be shared with others in sermons?

Continue reading “Something pastors cannot do and we should quit asking.” »

The preacher knew he should clean up his act, get right with the Lord and apologize for his past laziness and start taking his ministry seriously. Instead, he took the cheap way out.

He used his sermons to slam anyone thinking of leaving the church.

“It would be a sin against the Lord for you to leave this church at a time like this when it needs your faithfulness so much,” he said. “And I can promise you this, if you do this rebellious act, you will never find happiness in another church.”

When someone asked me what they should do–stay or leave such a church–after learning that the lay leadership had no intention of doing anything, I said, “Whenever a church decides it will accept shoddy pastoral leadership and refuses to abide by scriptural principles, unless you have strong reasons for staying, I would ask the Lord for permission to leave.”

“And,” I added, “if He does lead you to join another church, I can promise you almost anything will be an improvement over what you have there.”

Continue reading “What the cowardly pastor does” »

“A thorn in the flesh was given me….” (II Corinthians 12:7).

For two thousand years people have speculated on the nature of Paul’s thorn. But their efforts come to nothing. The Lord clearly did not intend for us to know what Paul’s handicap was.  For good reason…
“Well, Paul had this same problem too, so if he did you surely can’t expect me to conquer it.” You can just hear some husband justifying his failures (and unwillingness to deal with them) to his wife in those words.

“At least I don’t have Paul’s weaknesses.  His were awful and yet God used him.” Just so easily we would excuse our problems and cling to them.

We can be glad we do not have a clue what his problems were.

Continue reading “Why Paul didn’t tell us certain things” »

In an old radio program, a woman listens as Sherlock Holmes tells her exactly how a crime came about and how he exonerated her fiance’.  At the end, she exclaims, “Oh, Mister Holmes! You are wonderful.” Slight pause, then the master sleuth replies, “Quite!”

I do love to see confidence on display.

As Ali said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

A generation ago, after actor Jack Palance won an Oscar for his supporting role in the movie “City Slickers,” his celebrity was revived for a short time. Suddenly, he was in demand for commercials and more movie roles. In an ad for some after shave lotion, I think, this rugged star, by then in his 70s, squinted into the camera and said through his whiskey-voice, “Confidence is sexy. Don’t you think?”

There is something most attractive about confidence.

Continue reading “What confidence looks like in the pulpit” »

My friend Barbara Smith of Tuscaloosa tells of a college lit class in which the professor sat and lectured the entire time without a word of response from the class.  There was a reason for the silence.

Early in the semester, the professor told the class that under his teaching they would learn to love Shakespeare so much they would eat, sleep, and drink Shakespeare.  Barbara says, “Some idiot in the back of the classroom said, ‘Yeah, right,’ and that set the professor off.  He yelled and screamed at that student for a while, then announced, ‘You sir do not deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Get out!’”

Barbara says, “After that public humiliation, no one dared open their mouth the rest of the semester.”

No one enjoys being publicly humiliated. And most of us will go to great lengths to make sure it never happens.

We use deodorant, never wear some of the things in our closet, take a shower each morning, brush and floss and use mouth wash, and we carry a handkerchief. In almost every case, the reason we do these things is not because we feel a sense of personal need, that we are dirty, etc.  We do not want to risk giving offense to others or humiliating ourselves.

Anyone who has spent any time in front of the television has seen videos of gymnasts on balance beams and high crossbars falling in the most excruciating and embarrassing manners.  To master their difficult art, these courageous athletes must throw off all caution and abandon themselves to this jump or that twist or that somersault.  They know going in that before they get the precise path correct, they will fall again and again, providing film enough for a dozen television shows. That they persevere to triumph is a testament to their incredible courage and steely determination.

If the worst thing that can happen to you is to publicly humiliate yourself, then you will never want to–

Continue reading “Humiliated before the world….on a daily basis” »