Religion

Dealing With Deadened Motivation – II

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

What does it look like to address an issue of the affections by exposure to the attractiveness of our Lord, rather than by effort of the flesh?

Perhaps the marriage analogy can help here.  If I am growing cold in my affections toward my wife (which, if she reads this, I am not!), then the solution is not to “do the right thing.”  I can go and buy flowers and give them to her and even say “I love you” through clenched teeth.  That doesn’t do much for me, and does even less for her.  I am much better off simply being with her, allowing her attractiveness to draw my affections to her again. That is what I’m suggesting spiritually – allow the love of God to draw you to Him.

One last suggestion that has helped me was given to me by a good friend several years ago.  I pass it on to you gladly.  If I don’t feel like reading the Bible and being exposed to the attractive beauty of God’s grace, I don’t pretend otherwise and force myself, I tell him so.  “Lord, I don’t feel like reading your Word today.  Other things are far more interesting and attractive to me…”  Praying honestly (and out loud!) tends to bring conviction and brokenness as the Spirit of God works in my heart.  Before long I am broken at the foot of the cross, overwhelmed by the grace of God to a sinner like me.  Before long I want to be in His Word, not as an external duty, but with a captured heart, strangely warmed, but never proud of my own effort!

Dealing With Deadened Motivation

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

How are we to deal with a cold heart when we find one sitting in our own chest?  How should we respond to a lack of spiritual motivation?  I believe we need to think biblically and theologically about this very real challenge in our lives.

Effort of the flesh does not work. It is common advice.  Do the right thing and don’t worry about your feelings.  Your feelings must not drive you, choose by determination of the will to do what is right.  This is all very well, but it doesn’t hold up theologically.  The will is not an independent faculty of the soul that can switch on and take charge when our hearts are cold.  The will is in bondage to the affections, so what are we to do when there is a problem in our affections, a coldness of heart?  Forcing ourselves to do the right thing with a wrong heart is unwise.  Effort of the flesh leads either to sin (the fruit of the flesh in Galatians 5), or pseudo-success (external righteousness with a dead heart is the hypocrisy of Pharisaism).  Paul argues strongly in Galatians 3:1-3 against the notion that we can mature or increase in sanctification by the power of the flesh.

Deadened motivation is an issue of the affections. What does Paul contrast with flesh effort?  It is response to the Spirit, a faith response.  Our affections cannot be fixed by an effort of the will, that is getting it backwards.  Affection is only overcome by affection.  To put it another way, why do we love God?  We love God because He first loved us.  So when I sense the temperature dropping in my heart, my response cannot be to look to myself (flesh effort).  I have to look to Him (faith response).  I need response, not greater responsibility.  I need to delight again, not diligently stir up duty within.  So how do I address motivational issues in my own heart?  I simply lay myself open to the attractive power of the love of God.  What does that look like practically?  Well, typically it means spending time in His Word, perhaps listening to worship music, pondering creation or praying.  Isn’t that just “doing the right thing and letting feelings follow?”  Not really.  It may look similar on the outside, but it’s about being responsive to the love of God, not responsible to achieve my own spiritual motivation.

Tomorrow I will add a couple of thoughts to further clarify what I’ve described here.

Pondering the Cycles of Motivation

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Is it me, or is motivation cyclical?  I’ll use the term motivation, but it overlaps with issues of spiritual dryness, struggles with temptation, seasons of spiritual attack and so on.

The One-Week Cycle – Most of us recognize this one.  We build toward Sunday and then crash on Monday.  Some take Monday off.  Others use Monday for brain-dead admin catch-up.  Few preachers I know are at their best emotionally or spiritually on a Monday.

The One-Year Cycle – This is easy to spot too.  Something about January seems to reinvigorate and stir resolutions.  Perhaps December is so busy for you that it takes until February before the new year energy kicks in for you.  Nonetheless, there seems to be an injection of energy at the start of the new year for many of us.

The Six-Week Cycle – This is the one that is perhaps most significant for me.  Perhaps its just me, but I’ve noticed a roughly six-week cycle in my own motivation.  It could be 4-8 weeks, but I’ll call it 6 (I won’t call it 40 days in case it sounds like I have, or am making up, a biblical case for it).  It seems like I can trace a dip in motivation, or an increase in temptation, or a dip into dryness, roughly every six weeks.

You may be perpetually up, or unceasingly low, or you may notice some cyclical nature to your spiritual, emotional, ministerial motivation.  I think it is good to know our own patterns, to be aware of our own weaknesses, and to seek to deal with these things not through the effort of the flesh, but in an appropriate spiritual manner.  I’ll give my thoughts on that tomorrow.

Preaching One Text – Part II

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Yesterday I addressed why it is generally best to preach on a single text.  Today I’d like to address a possible misunderstanding that might result from this suggestion:

This emphasis on preaching a single text does not mean that I advocate preaching biblically naive or theologically unaware messages.  To really understand a particular passage usually requires us to study (or at least be aware of) other passages that feed into it.  For instance, can we grasp what is going on with the marriage issues in Ezra/Nehemiah without being thoroughly informed by the Torah?  Can we understand the prophets as they seek to enforce the covenant if our awareness of that covenant in Deuteronomy is lacking?  Can we grasp New Testament teaching built on Old Testament paradigms if our Old Testament pages remain clean and stuck together?  Walter Kaiser speaks of the “informing theology” of a passage.  We must be careful not to miss critical elements for understanding our preaching text when those elements are recorded earlier in the Bible.

Having studied to the full extent of our resources (time and skill), we then need to consider what our listeners actually need to hear.  A sermon should not be an information dump in which every detail of our exegesis is piled onto the ears of our listeners.  Perhaps no “informing theology” is necessary to communicate this passage.  Perhaps only a brief summary will do.  Sometimes we need to have them turn the pages and see it for themselves.   We must do everything we can to fully understand the passage, but remember that all our work cannot be squeezed into the minutes available for preaching, or squeezed into the minds and hearts of our listeners.  We study at length, then cut out everything unnecessary for preaching the main point of the message.

We may preach one passage, but let us not preach biblically naive or theologically unaware messages.

Preaching One Text

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I emphasize the need to preach a single text in most sermons.  There are exceptions, but generally one text is the way to go.  I want to be clear why I make this suggestion (today) and address a possible misunderstanding (tomorrow).

I strongly suggest preaching on one text most of the time, because it is so easy to scratch the surface of a passage and yet fail to preach the text.  Multiplying texts only multiplies the likelihood of missing the point and failing to really preach the text at all.  It takes a lot of work to wrestle with a text and have a text wrestle with you.  It takes a lot of prayerful thought to engage with historical and written context, to recognize rhetorical structure, to analyze each detail of content, to ascertain authorial intent (purpose as well as meaning) and to synthesize the core idea of a passage.  I don’t think I’m being lazy when I suggest taking multiple passages multiplies the workload beyond what most of us can bear (if we are to really preach rather than scratch the surface, or scratch some itchy ears).

What is Preaching Primarily About?

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Just a short teaser of a post today, then a break tomorrow (because you really shouldn’t be reading about preaching on Christmas day!)  I’ve just been writing a longer article for another blog.  I’ll link to it once it is posted there.  But in it I address the real foundation of homiletics. While some may consider the field of homiletics to be all about communication techniques – “mere rhetoric” if you like, this is missing the point.

Preaching is a complex subject with many vital tributaries.  I would suggest that the technical stuff has to be built on a solid foundation of the hermeneutics and the spirituality of the preacher.  There are other critical foundational elements too . . . but the article is already too long!

Have a great Christmas!

Dealing With Personal Inadequacies in Preaching

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Yesterday I made a passing comment about inadequacy in preaching.  We all feel inadequate in some area.  Perhaps it relates to our lack of training.  Or our lack of understanding the many elements of the expository preaching process.  Or perhaps we feel lightweight in the arena of theology.  Or maybe our delivery lacks that certain something.  Or maybe we feel inadequate in the area of pastoral awareness and connection with our listeners.  The list could go on.  Here are some thoughts on this matter:

1. Feelings of inadequacy are appropriate. As I wrote the other day, we are out of our depth.  We should be feeling inadequate as we handle God’s Word, as we prepare to present the Word of God to people who need it so desperately, as we participate in a ministry with such eternal ramifications.  Inadequacy should be the name of the game on one level.

2. Feelings of inadequacy should not be avoided. There are ways to hide from our feelings of inadequacy.  For instance, rationalizing approaches that circumvent our areas of weakness.  One example was presented yesterday – just waiting on God to give us what to say rather than facing the challenge of studying the text to see what God has said there.  We naturally find ways to avoid inadequacy and protect ourselves.  This is not a faith approach.

3. Feelings of inadequacy should not undermine faith. When we stand to preach, we stand in faith.  We have to trust God.  We have to trust in His Word.  We have to trust in the power of His Spirit.  So feelings of inadequacy may be a prompt to doubt, which we should address by prayer-fueled faith.

4. Feelings of inadequacy might be a prompt to faith-filled action. I deliberately didn’t put this first, but it does belong on the list.  That is to say, perhaps our feelings of inadequacy should prompt us to prayerfully strengthen in those areas of weakness.  Is it time to take a course of study, attend a training day, read a book, work through a systematic theology text or whatever?  We should not try to strengthen weakness as a means of fleshly self-reliance, but rather as good stewards of the ministry God has entrusted to us.  Let us prove to be faithful stewards, rather than fearful stewards.

Feelings of inadequacy – not all good, not all bad, not the end of the story.

Beware Special Revelation Preaching

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I need to be careful how I phrase this post.  Depending on our theology, we all have slightly differing views of how much God directly communicates with us.  Some are very hesitant to hint that God “spoke” to them, while others freely assign such labels that give the impression of a hotline from heaven.  I don’t intend to weigh in on the issues of guidance or prophecy, etc.  My concern is with biblical preaching.

We need to be careful that we don’t undermine our approach to preaching by means of a “special revelation” approach to sermon preparation.  The process is fairly simple to explain: you spend time prayerfully considering the text and the occasion until you sense that God has “given you something to say.”  Then you preach that.  I am not dismissing this approach out of hand, but I do want to raise some warning flags.  First though, let me affirm the intent in this approach:

Affirmed – The desire to say what God is saying. This should be the desire of every true preacher.  We want to say what God wants us to say, nothing else.

Affirmed – The reliance on God through prayer. May we never advocate or practice prayerless preaching.

Affirmed – The desire for contemporary relevance.

However . . .

Warning Flag – There is an inherent risk that the text God inspired will be abused as merely a point of departure for other thoughts, which may or may not be from Him.

Warning Flag – The process can be a shortcut taken to avoid the prayerful work of understanding the passage and planning how to best present the truth found there.  (Perhaps also a safety measure to avoid feeling personal inadequacy in the area of Bible study, preaching, etc.  It is better to bring our inadequacy to God, rather than finding ways to avoid the issue.)

Warning Flag – This approach can undermine the congregation’s view of the Bible. It fails to demonstrate that when the Bible is understood properly, God is speaking.  It gives the impression that we need something new and fresh, rather than the “old stuff” in the Bible.  A truly dangerous impression to give.

The reality is that we can and must commit to prayerful study of the Bible in order to understand its meaning and then present that meaning emphasizing its relevance for our listeners on a particular occasion.  Perhaps Don Sunukjian’s simple definition of expository preaching is a good place to end – “Listen to what God is saying . . . to us!”

Application is Not About Benefits

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In the understanding of expository preaching espoused on this site, application is central.  Expository preaching must involve the explanation of the meaning of the biblical text while emphasizing the relevance of that text to the contemporary listener.  This is born out of an understanding that the Bible is highly relevant to us all.  However, there is a danger of misunderstanding this emphasis on relevance and application.

The danger is that people may take away the thought that we are advocating a strong view of the benefits associated with applying the Bible to our lives.  In reality, we are saying much more than that.  Paul House, in his article in Preach the Word, gives Christopher Wright credit for identifying the opposite reality.  We do not apply the Bible to our lives, but rather, “through the power of the Holy Spirit we must learn and help others to learn to ‘apply our lives to the Bible.’  God and his Word – not our lives and minds – comprise the horizon of reality and authority.  We are required to conform to the Scriptures; they are not required to conform to us.”  (Preach the Word, p25)

Only in this way do we protect listeners from getting the impression that they can pick and choose those parts of the Bible that appear most valuable.  As Tozer said, “Nothing less than a whole Bible can produce a whole Christian.”  So application is not primarily about the benefits for our lived reality.  Application is about conforming our lives to reality.

Never Bore With Shocking Truth

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During the dark days of World War 2, the BBC asked writer Dorothy Sayers to write a series of radio plays on the life of Christ.  This spawned a series of feisty letters back and forth between the writer and the corporation, with members of parliament trying to intervene and protestant pressure groups adding their voice.

The series of 12 plays was writted by Sayers and produced by Val Gielgud, entitled, “The Man Born to be King.” In December 1941 the plays began airing (one every fourth week) on BBC Home Service.  The story remained in its ancient setting, but characters spoke in contemporary English rather than the conventional King James.

Many were shocked by the story, but Sayers affirmed that they should be shocked. She felt that the inherent drama of the Gospel had become muffled by familiarity and by the failure to think of its characters as real people with human emotions and motivations.  The Christian faith is the “most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man.”  Sayer’s famous quote that Christ was no “household pet for pale pale curates and pious old ladies, but God made flesh, a shattering personality, a dangerous firebrand, hero and victim, finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger.”

While I don’t agree that Christ was a victim in every sense of the term, I do appreciate the desire to bring back the shock of the Maker of all in a manger, the Maker killed by those He made, and the glorious wonder of the empty tomb.

As we come to “Christmas service Sunday,” let’s be sure not to present this episode in the most exciting drama with muffled familiarity or two-dimensional characters.  In fact, every week, let’s preach so that we never bore our listeners with the shocking truth of the Gospel!