Sometimes what I hear is direct speaking, sometimes it’s an expressed feeling, and sometimes it’s a strong urging, but when I “hear” You I can’t deny it and all I want is more.

It is your voice oh Lord that I crave and that sustains me each day. If it is ever taken away, my life would be without purpose and void. But with Your Word; I am refreshed, I am alive, and I am given purpose!

We were at The Enchanted Forest; a small story-book themed amusement park South of Salem, Oregon. It’s a nice little amusement park that I have been going to for as long as I can remember.

I held my daughter tightly as we walked down the brick pathway and into the “ice cream house”. She is two years-old, has big dark blue eyes, and the most beautiful blonde pony-tailed hair you’ve ever seen. Her body perked up with excitement as she approached the house.

This was not simply an ice cream house though, it was the witch’s house from the morbidly strange children’s story ‘Hansel and Gretel’. And from the moment we got about two feet from the entrance to the house, Kylie knew something was afoot that wasn’t quite right.

Her little body stiffened with fear and her bobbly head reluctantly peeked around the door frame to see what was hiding inside this house deceptively made of ice cream. And with her adorable little two year-old voice she said something that sounded like;” I squaied….” Which I’m pretty sure means “I’m scared.”

Then, she saw the thirty+ year-old antequated animatronic witch luring in Gretel while Hansel was being held in a cage dangerously close to a fire, and began asking to “Go home!”

Then I remember that, I too when I was little, was terrified of this same attraction at The Enchanted Forest. I knew it was fake, I knew Hansel and Gretel was simply a fairy tale, I too was intrigued by a house made of candy and ice cream, and I knew that my older sister and brother-in-law would protect me if something went awry. But I was still terrified.

Now my daughter Kylie is only two and she doesn’t know anything about witches, what canabalism (Hansel and Gretel) is, and originally had no idea what was even inside, but for some reason she knew to be afraid.

Jesus’ words to Peter after Peter declared Him to be the Christ are brought to mind when thinking about my daughter’s fear today; and mine when I was a child. He said,” …on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

So many Christians live in fear of the unknown, worry about things they have no control over, blame every little hang-nail on the devil, hide from the world in fear of being infected by the “contagious” illness of sin, and never step out to accomplish God-sized things because they’re afraid of failing.

Either they’re too young in their faith or too naive to know why they are scared; or they know that there is truly nothing to be scared of in light of what God has promised them, but for some reason they just fear.

I think fear is instilled in us from a very young age. Since the culture around us has become so familiar with fearing particular things, we follow suit, and it becomes our very nature.

I’ve watched videos of newborn babies being surrounded by snakes, and they weren’t afraid at all. So I guess it’s more nurture than nature when it comes to our fears. But how are we nurturing a culture of fear; especially within the church??

We as Christians, as the Church, are called and established to be Hell-Busters. We literally have the power achieved by the finished work of Christ through the  Holy Spirit to break down the very gates of hell! No one can stop us from accomplishing the God-sized things we’ve been called to; no one except for ourselves. It is only our fear that will stop us from accomplishing what God has put in front of us.

So whether it’s a witches house made of ice cream, an opinionated gossiper, or the devil himself; we have no reason to fear because the battle is not ours- it is the Lord’s. Satan, sin, hell, and death are being done away with, but the victory of Christ and the assurance thereof lasts forever.

Although I don’t condone making or performing any art that is sinful by actively promoting an ungodly lifestyle, I would like to engage you with a few points:

Have you ever…?

-Have you ever seen a Christian piece of pottery?

-Have you ever tasted a freshly baked Christian cupcake?

-Have you ever marveled at a Christian clothing article as a model walked it down     the runway?

-Have you ever stood in awe at the bottom of a Christian architecturally ingenious building?

The answer to all of these questions is inexplicably, “No”. But when you take this to its extreme, where does that leave things like music? We, as Christians, are constantly labeling things Christian and nonChristian.

Christian Music:

But how do you classify a song as being Christian? Can a song be saved from hell? Can a song have a relationship with Jesus? No. We tend to label a song as Christian if it mentions Jesus in a positive light, is sung by a Christian, and if it’s played on a Christian radio station. But when a Christian artist who sings Christian songs sings a song that doesn’t explicitly mention Jesus or even if their song does mention Jesus and is played on a secular radio station- Watch Out, all hell breaks loose in the Christian community!

Compared to the Bible:

That’s all good and well until you look at…the Bible. And if you classify things as being ‘secular or sacred’ and ‘Christian and nonChristian’, the problem you end up with is that you’ll have to eliminate large portions of Scripture. And if you’re really black and white on this issue, you’d have to throw out the whole book because of its constant references to things which are VERY unpleasant, immoral, very unadvisable, and godless.

If you’ve never really read the book of Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ruth, Esther, Job, and Song of Solomon; you are in for a surprise! The book of Ruth barely even mentions God; the book of Esther doesn’t mention Him at all, and neither does Song of Solomon. And you would probably be shocked of what IS talked about in Song of Solomon- it definitely wouldn’t be classified as a Christian song by today’s Christian standards.

Everything Is Spiritual:

The reason that these things are validly Scripture is because they are true to the human experience: love, betrayal, war, sex, commitment, politics, money, children and parenting, etc…. You cannot say that some of these issues are sacred and some of them are not. Rob Bell, in his famous teaching Everything Is Spiritual, states,” To label something as spiritual is to label something as not spiritual.” You see everything in life has meaning and is spiritual just as much as it is physical. After all God, who is spirit, created us in His image and permeates everything in existence.

He desires every piece of our lives to be lived sacredly unto Him. That’s why I’ve mentioned before that everything is worship: not just church, not just t-shirts with the name Jesus on them, not just fish bumper stickers, or Christian radio stations, but everything.

How to Create:

An unknown Pastor who goes by the name of “Reverend J” receives various questions on a Christian blog known as John Mark Ministries. Someone asked him about this division between the sacred and the secular and he wrote this about art:

“A true artist gives his soul away to others. That is his or her gift to the world. It is a sacred impulse. A holy impulse. That impulse should not be contained and restricted but encouraged to flower and flourish. Christians, of all people, should be the first to facilitate that artistic impulse. During the Renaissance period the church got it right. That period produced the greatest art the world has ever seen. What happened? We’ve lost a lot of ground since then. It’s time to face the music and claim it back!”

And with that being said, some of the music I have heard that has been ‘so-called Christian music’ is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard artistically speaking. While the best music I have ever heard has been ‘so-called secular music’, music that is not explicitly about God, but about life and the human condition which is very sacred and very spiritual. And that’s something we can all relate to.

So whether you make music, cook steak, paint pictures, dance, act, perform standup comedy, whatever it is; do it as unto the Lord and let the creativity He gave you flow out of you with all its might. Should you be mindful not to offend a holy God with things that are distasteful or promote a sinful life, absolutely- after all, this is worship we’re talking about!

But don’t shy away with allowing your art to portray real life because it is very spiritual and everyone can relate to that and find God through real life circumstance and creativity.

What I found odd is that both pastors stated within their sermons that it was not neccesary to beleive that the story of Jonah had actually happened. They stated that what matters is ‘what the story means for us’. They asked their audiences to suspend their disbelief in the story and just listen to it as if it were a moral tale.

I understand why they did that. There are many unbelievers who will not listen to what the Bible has to say because they don’t believe it is true. The pastors must have thought that if the unbeliever was given permission to disbelieve the validity of the Bible, they might actually pick up on the morality of the story and apply it to their lives. There’s a problem with that though.

Churches, pastors, Christians, and particular Jesus share a common mission: saving the lost from eternal tormentious seperation from God. Trying to get an unbeliever to simply understand the moral of a story will never save them to a restored relationship with God. If that’s all it took to ‘be saved’, being moral, then there was no purpose in the sacrificial death of Jesus and there is certainly no purpose for the Church and its people- not to mention the fact that there would be no hope for any of us because in case you haven’t noticed we, as people, don’t even posses the abillity to be moral on our own.

The Bible is abundantly clear that the only way to salvation was through the perfect life that we could never live, lived by Jesus; the sacrificial death that we deserved to die, taken on by Jesus; and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, all of which defeated Satan, sin, hell, and death. That finished work of Christ is given to us totally as a gift of grace and can be recieved only through faith, not by simply applying morality myths to our lives.

In order to have faith, or trust, in Christ’s finished work and recieve salvation we are required to believe that He actually is who the Word of God states He is, and that He actually accomplished the work the Bible said He did. The Bible states to be saved that we must confess with our mouths Jesus is Lord and BELIEVE in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead. We can’t simply beleive in the idea of something like this happening, apply that belief into our lives whether it happened or not, and then be saved. We are actually required to beleive that this actually happened.

So what does this have to do with Jonah? Two things:

The first: If we can doubt the credibility of certain stories in the Bible that seem a little too far fetched for us, we should then doubt the validity of all of its stories and writings. If one part of the Bible which has claimed to be, and has been seen as, historically true for thousands of years is actually not true; then why beleive any of it at all??! The Bible is totally congruent in itself and all parts of it are built on the foundations of preceding and proceding passages that illuminate the whole of Scripture. If one passage’s validity fails, then every other one’s does as well.

The second: Jesus beleived in the story of Jonah. He even used the story to give people a sign that He was the Messiah. He stated, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus said this to speak of His upcoming resurrection which He acurately prophesies here Himself- try to accomplish that self-fulfilling prophecy!

The entire faith/religion of Christianity is built on the credibillity of Jesus and in Him being God the Son- thus being omnicient. If Jesus spoke of something as truth, something that He applied to His very validity of being the long awaited Messiah, and it was not true, then shouldn’t we throw out all of the teachings of Jesus and His very abillity to save us? For if he lied, He was not the perfect sacrifice for our sin. And if He had not known of the validity of the story of Jonah, then He was not God and had no power to save and forgive sins in the first place.

So as Christians, especially as pastors, we must not apologize for the miraculous nature of the stories in which our faith is rooted in. For if we allow people to pick and choose what they feel is valid within the Bible, we might as well throw the whole thing out. Because if a claim of the Bible proves to be false, then why believe any of it. For this, afterall, is about belief, not morality.

Too often teachers will refer to a Bible story or passage, not explain it, then pass by to the next thing- leaving their audience bewildered as they continue.

If you build a foundation for the rest of your message on something that no one understands or knows about (either a Bible strory or cultural reference), they won’t be able to understand the rest of your message it’s built on.

Don’t be affraid of referencing obscure Bible stories or cultural references, just explain them- alot (more to come on that later).

Remember, especially with younger people, that today’s generation probably doesn’t know much about the Bible stories that you learned in Sunday school because- they didn’t go to Sunday School.

So remember to preach to the nonChristians, or the Biblically uneducated, in your crowd and not just to the seasoned saints. When a simple message is spoken, where Biblical points and theology, are thoroughly explained everyone is strengthened and edified- especially if the message is Gospel focused on and central (more to come on that later).

I always assume that my audience is made up of nonChristians and speak to the entire audience as if they are such. This way I can make sure that everyone understands and can weave the central message of salvation into everything, and hope for a response to the Gospel.

As I gear the message towards the lost, I also make sure to make many references that Christians will catch, but not at the expense of losing the most valuable member of your crowd: the unsaved.

This seems like stating the obvious, but every once in a while I’ll run across a teacher who is afraid of behind a microphone or who thinks that they’re not “keeping it real” when using a Mic.

Even though the speaker may be out of their element by using a microphone, it is a disrespect to the audience to not use one.

If it is a very small group (under 30 people) in a very small room (under 200 square feet) it may not be necessary, but in almost all cases, it is. If you have such a small group as mentioned, but are in a bigger room, you will need a Mic. If you are outside, you will really need a Mic. And if you have a larger group, you absolutely must use a Mic.

It’s too hard for people to pick up everything you say when your voice is not amplified; mainly because bodies absorb sounds and people naturally make noise that makes it hard to hear what an unmiced speaker is saying. Being Miced makes sure that your message gets across and permeates the distractions of the audience.

And if you’re afraid of microphones, and want to be a speaker, get over it!

Once you have picked the portion of Scipture you will preach on, or have picked the topic/Biblical principle you will teach about; pick the one thing you want people to walk away with. In same cases you may have several points (for example if you are teaching on the doctorine of the Holy Spirit you would want to teach on who He is, how He relates to/within the Trinity, and what He does, etc…), but try to keep those points to a minimum and focus only on what’s most important.

Now that you have the topic and the point (s), work backwards from that to determine how you will teach that point and what you will use to illustrate it (storys, props, relevant Scriptures, etc…)

Building a sermon from the ground up is very difficult because once you build one tier of it, you have to build another and another to eventually get to your point.

But if you work from the top to the bottom, all you have to do is drop a few ladders down to get people to the point (conclusion) you intended from the beginning.

This helps you keep your focus while you’re preparing and makes message much easier to understand for those you are speaking it to.

Once you have a clear path defined from the point of the message to its beginning, then you can go back through and add a few more illustrations to make the trip to the top even easier- as long as you don’t make the trip too long.

Too often, Bible teachers spend little to no time thinking in advance what they’ll be speaking about. Either because of an overloaded schedule or an arrogant-like, over-dependence on the leading of the Holy Spirit; they’ll plan their message (in it’s entirety) for that week…THAT week, often even the night before.

I’ll adress those two reasons.

First, I believe that the teacher (usually also the head pastor) within a church has its most important and central role. They are the ones who communicate the church’s mission, vision, purpose, beliefs and values. They are the ones who teach the church the Bible, preach visitors the Gospel; and cast vision and envision ministries to the glorification of God and the advancement of His kingdom for his elders, board, deacons, ministers, and volunteers to administer and implement.

Too many times these leaders are expected by the their church to do too many things: counseling, visitation, secretarial work, book keeping, adminstering and implementing different ministries, prayer gatherings, phone answering, etc….

Now of course, all of these things are things that a pastor will have to do from time to time- especially more so in a smaller church. But the more empowerment a leader gives to elders, deacons, ministers, and volunteers; the less of a load he will have to carry so that he can spend the majority of his time doing what’s most important in his job: preparing the preaching of God’s work and casting vision for the church to follow.

Second, the most important thing a teacher (pastor) can do, after continual Bible study, is rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to direct, guide, and inspire them.

However, I have seen and heard of too many leaders that almost overly rely on the guidance of the Spirit when it comes to message prep.

You’ll hear things from them like,” I haven’t been led to know what I will be speaking about this weekend yet,” “God will give me what to say when I stand up to say it,” and “I haven’t gotten the go-ahead yet from God on the message I want to bring.”

Now trust me, I believe in the Spirit of God leading a teacher what to speak about. But the Holy Spirit is not a God of disorder. He’s a God of order. And while the Bible is clear on the sovereignty of God, it’s also clear on the responsibity of man. One such responsibilty we have is planning. This especially comes into play when getting ready to speak the Word of God.

I believe that failing to plan is planning to fail. And I don’t believe that God will greatly bless us in our efforts if we don’t prepare and work properly on the task at hand.

Look at Joseph in the book of Genesis! His whole life was sovereignly moved by God, but it was also a life of taking responsibility and allowing God to change bad situations into positive ones through faith, planning, patience, and the using of his gifts and talents.

So allow the Holy Spirit to lead you what to speak about. But pray about it and envision your speaking topics months, if not a year or so, in advance.

God will guide you, then you’ll have time to properly execute the preparation of your message. You’ll have time to come up with the right illustrations, study the right materials, write out exactly what you want to say, and to study and rehearse your finished message- all of that probably finished weeks before the day you nbd to give the message.

Planning out ahead gives you the opportunity to teach on large themes or books of the Bible and to connect them with other message series before or after them. It gives you clarity when planning the rest of your schedule for months into the future.

Planning ahead will always be most simple and most effective if you do series. Planning far in advance stand-alone messages would be very difficult.

With a series, you can decide many months in advance what you will focus on each week of the series, then have ample time to study and prepare a sermon for each of those topics.

Some people are afraid that they won’t be able to come up with a series months in advance. Don’t worry! God WILL guide you, but if you really can’t come up with anything, pick a book of the Bible and expositionally walk your people through it over the course of several weeks or months (even years). You can’t go wrong with the Bible. Just make sure that you break the book down into parts that you want to spend a week on, determine how long the series will be, then plan the next series after that and start studying for upcoming series.

Once applied, this principle will be liberating. Involve your elders and minaret staff in your decisions for your speaking calendar. God may use them to direct you where to go. Plus, you may even plug them or other great speakers into a rotation so they can take a week or two of your series for you so you can focus on…planning the next series…

I have always found that no matter how good of a speaker you are, audiences always respond better to someone who has invested much time and forethought into the preparation of the message being given. And they can always tell if someone is unprepared or simply winging it.

More to come tomorrow-

And even though I’m far from being a great teacher, there are some people who just aren’t good speakers at all. This is possibly because they have no talent or spiritual gift for it, and should just not be doing it; or they have great talent, gifts, and potential for speaking but are still too immature, inexperienced, unconfident, and/or unknowledgable to even begin reaching their potential.

For those with a passion, talent, and gifting for speaking/teaching yet struggle in this area, I would like to give some advice. I will spend the next week or so pointing out some areas that all teachers/preachers of the Word of God can work on- especially me.