PASTORS HEAR ME, PLEASE READ!
The times in which we now live has changed the mechanics of sermon preparation for the average pastor/teacher that has to stand and preach to their assigned local congregation week in and week out.
Worldliness, pragmatism, skepticism, subjective/relativism, spiritual malaise and apostasy has wrapped it’s tentacles around the throat of so many believers. These things are choking the life out of our local congregations. Preaching is becoming more of a dreadful challenge to persuade believers to live for God. I can remember a time when the pastor would preach with the lost people in the room as the target audience and the believers helped the message with timely, heartfelt AMENS.
Preaching was once a privilege and welcomed labor of love. Now, the God-called preacher who’s fodder was his forgiven past and hungry audience now find things contrived and frustrating at best.
Facebook communities share their opinions at their leisure. False prophets and teachers abound and use all forms of social media as their pulpits for the propagation of mass deception. Facts and historical data are being spewed over the internet as if facts and a person’s history have the power to change lives. Objective truth is treated like trivia and fiction. Facts and historical data are presented by the scoffers and mockers as means to prove that God’s Holy Word is neither inerrant, infallible nor trustworthy.
To have to prepare to go out on a Sunday morning and stand before a crowd of people hoodwinked and bamboozled by fake news across the board is a daunting task. To address people who have binged all day Saturday on their latest made for tv movies, Queer Eye, Modern Family, and multiple reality shows is almost asking too much from someone who is simply charged to lead, feed and truly care for the flock of God.
I recommend to all of the pastor/teachers that have to stand tomorrow morning and any other day in these conditions. PRAY! Pray and ask God to fill you will the Holy Spirit. Ask your heavenly Father to give you insight, illumination, and wisdom to cut through this thick influence of spiritual darkness. Turn your study into a sanctuary and lay your mind and heart on the altar. He will meet you and grant you the boldness to do what needs to be done to bring renewal and revival to this untoward generation.
Times have changed but our great commission has not. We’ve been charged to preach the gospel to every creature. I will close with what Paul said to Timothy when times got extremely hard for him because of the calamity and convoluted messages and opinions that watered down the message in his day.
2 Tim 4:2-5 NKJV
Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Preach the word! The word has the power to change lives. Dig in, take a deep breath and go in the power of the Spirit. Yes, the times have changed but not Jesus. He is the same yesterday, today and forevermore.
–Vaughn McLaughlin
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