A good friend and commenter on this site sent me a list of about twenty lessons he’d noted after preaching a sermon recently.  I am indebted to Tim for the prompts for yesterday’s post, today’s, and probably a few more to come!

Here’s one of those “lessons learnt” – stress and tiredness do affect your preaching.

Sometimes the problem is that we get stressed about being stressed, or stressed about being tired.  Again, if my night was interrupted because of sickness in the family, then God understands and can provide supernatural strength to compensate.   (Thankfully, as well as an awesome God, I also have a wonderful wife who often handles everything the night before I preach!)

However, it is still worth evaluating the sources of stress and tiredness in our schedule.  Perhaps it is worth guarding the evening before we preach – guarding it from late night socializing or hospitality?  Perhaps it is worth adding exercise to increase the stress-threshold and aid in healthy sleep?  Perhaps it is worth taking a holistic approach to scheduling our future preaching – not just making sure we avoid committing to too many sermons, but also thinking about what the sermons will be, and what our other commitments and challenges will be at the time?

Stress and tiredness do affect our preaching, thanks Tim for the prompt!