Fire in the dry sticks

It is usually after I have thought through or more formally prepared the introduction to a sermon that I again sit back and remember to pray. I do not mean that I should not or do not pray until that point (at least in theory), but it is often then that I am forced to consider my desperate need of God's help.

Will anyone still be listening? I hope I will have the ears and hearts of the people to whom I speak at this point, but will my words - designed to catch their attention and arrest their often-troubled and easily-distracted minds - have any effect, or will those troubles and distractions already have won the battle?

I am about to plunge into the substance of the sermon, the careful explanation and pointed application of God's holy truth, but will it have any effect? Even if people are still listening, will these words penetrate into the depths of the soul? There are men and women and children in front of me who are walking in darkness, and who need to see the light of the gospel of Christ. There are those who are downcast who need to be lifted up, those who are weary who need to be strengthened, those who are careless who need to be warned, those who are proud who need to be humbled, those who are presumptuous who need to be checked, those who are ignorant who need to be instructed, those who are hungry who need to be fed, those who are lazy who need to be stirred, those who are wandering who need to be drawn back. So many needs, such feeble words. Will these words, this sermon, have any lasting impact on the people who will be in front of me on the Lord's day, morning and evening?

So there I am, on the cusp of the thing, teetering between those words which are intended to open the door to people's arrested understanding and those words which are intended to carry truth through the door. Are they still hearing? Will they from this point hear - really hear?

And therefore I sit back and remember to pray, because neither what I have prepared nor what I am about to prepare will accomplish anything without the present, powerful influence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from his operations upon my heart and the hearts of those who will gather, there is a sense in which all will be wasted. It is the abiding Word of God that I will teach; the Spirit does not make it the Word of God in the act of its being preached and received. But if that Word is to reach its intended target it must be carried in on the wings of the divine Paraclete. If it is to accomplish its intended ends, then it must be applied - driven home and made effective - not just naturally by the labouring carer for souls but supernaturally by the all-powerful Spirit of God.

We cannot afford to go through the motions when we preach. We must reach the point at which we look at the words on the page or the screen, or review the things that are stirring in our minds and hearts, consider whatever notes that we have made to enable us to communicate the truth as it is in Jesus, and acknowledge that they will be as dry as a stick without heavenly influence. And that should drive us to our knees before God crying out to make his words effective in the hearts and lives of men, to do that thing which beggars human expectation and to make his word to prosper in the thing for which he sent it (Is 55.11), to bring the holy hammer of truth down with divine might on the stones of human hearts (Jer 23.29), and to glorify his name in salvation in its most complete sense.

And so we should gather up those dry sticks of our intended discourse, and pile them before God, and ask for fire from heaven.