A week of study
posted by Jesse on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 1:50 am
Several weeks ago I was asked to speak at our church’s Men’s Prayer Breakfast on the 31st of this month. Then a couple days ago our pastor asked me to take the entire service this Wednesday night to preach and share some details about our move to Togo and our soon-to-be ministry there.
So, needless to say, that put me in to “study mode” this week. I really enjoy times like this when I can dig deeply into a passage of Scripture in order to discover the main, over-arching idea of the passage and then the individual truths that support that idea. I tend to be a more introverted and studious person, so figuring out how to effectively communicate those truths to other people is usually where I struggle, but I thank God for showing me that I can never rely or depend on my own strength or abilities, but on His grace and Spirit.
On Wednesday, I’ll be speaking from a text that’s very familiar to me, 2 Corinthians 5, mostly verses 11-21. It’s one that I preached from often during deputation, but I’ll be coming at it from a different angle. That’s the beauty of the Bible; it can be preached over and over again and never get old. There is no way in a lifetime - in ten lifetimes - that we could exhaust every truth and every application of every passage in the Bible.
I’d greatly appreciate your prayer for me as I prepare and then as I preach. I have preached many times, but do not even remotely feel that I have mastered it. And to tell you the truth, I hope that I never do because that will probably be the day that I stop relying on Christ alone in order to do it. So, above all, please pray that I will be completely reliant and dependent on the Holy Spirit, and that I will communicate effectively the message of the passage and not my own opinions. And pray as always that God will be glorified!
Category: ministry
