Sermon Central
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Ask Yourself Four Powerful Questions Just Before You Preach
By Perry Noble on Sep 21, 2013
Write these down and keep them in your Bible. In those final moments before you take the pulpit, challenge yourself!
1. Do I Belong to Him?
The key to success in life/ministry isn’t preaching a good message and/or making a great series of leadership decisions. We will only be successful long term if we belong to Him.
If we belong to Him, we will say what He tells us to say and do what He tells us to do; if we belong to “them,” we will always back down.
2. Do I Believe This?
In other words—"Are you smokin’ what you're sellin’?"
We can’t preach on purity if we aren’t fighting to be pure.
We can’t preach on money if we are robbing God.
We can’t preach on integrity if we are not letting our "yes" be "yes" and our "no" be "no."
When we preach something, we’ve got to believe it, or else we will preach from convenience and not conviction.
3. Am I Leading or Responding?
We should seek to lead our people through the preaching of His Word—period!
I used to feel like I had to respond to all of the questions/complaints I received the week before in the upcoming message … and doing so caused me to lose focus on where our church needed to go and what was best for the majority of the people in attendance.
4. Do I Believe the Promise in Isaiah 55:8-13?
Nothing is more discouraging to a preacher than when we preach our guts out and there seems to be zero response. However, God’s Word promises that if we are faithful to declare it, it will NOT return without producing a harvest.
Sometimes we do get to see immediate results, but most of the time God will take His Word and work it into the hearts and minds of the hearers over time. Trust God and His Word—a harvest IS coming!
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