Relax, Results Can’t Be Orchestrated

March 9, 2025 Leave a comment

Growing up on an Iowa farm I helped my dad till the soil, plant, cultivate, and then harvest the crops. We put much effort into growing crops but never made them grow.

I recall us having planted a field of corn east of the farm buildings. For days all you could see when looking at the field was black soil. Then, about a week after planting, I looked east at the sun coming up over the horizon and the sun’s glimmering reflection on rows of small spikes of emerging corn. We had done nothing after planting the corn seed. It had come up all by itself.

This memory reminds me of a parable Jesus told, recorded only in the Gospel of Mark which has clear application to pastoral ministry. “He also said, ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come’” (Mark 4:26-29).

J. C. Ryle comments on this passage, “Let us observe this truth also, for it is deeply instructive. It is humbling, no doubt, to ministers and teachers of others. The highest abilities, the most powerful preaching, the most diligent working cannot command success. God alone can give spiritual life. But it is a truth at the same time which supplies an admirable antidote to over-anxiety and despondency. Our principal work is to sow the seed. That done, we may wait with faith and patience for the result. We may go to bed at night and [get] up by day and leave our work with the Lord. He alone can, and if He thinks fit, He will give success.” (Expository Thoughts on The Gospel of Mark, J. C. Ryle, Aneko Press)

As a pastor, I often saw myself as a farmer. My farm was my local church. Like a farmer, I planted, tilled, watered, and weeded in many metaphorical ways. Like the farmer, the results were up to God. This thought, when embraced, can lighten a pastor’s burden. It did for me.

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God’s Word — Professional Use vs Private Use

May 9, 2013 Leave a comment

BibleOpen“That’ll preach” I’m tempted to think when I’ve gained some fresh insight from a Biblical text. Therein lies the danger of preachers reading their Bibles; we can come to see scripture primarily as a tool for carrying out the task of preaching. Yes, it’s that, the crucial tool we use in preaching, but I regularly have to remind myself it’s to be so much more.

When my primary motivation for opening up the Bible is to find a message to deliver to the people then I’m using it professionally and not personally. I have a need to go first to the Bible as a person, not as a parson. The Bible must speak to me before I can expect God to use me as an instrument through which His Word can speak to His people.

I find it helpful to have a separate time and place to read God’s Word from when I study it for sermon preparation. For me, this means opening up God’s Word early in the morning and at home, away from my office and the commentaries.

I also have to approach God’s Word differently. It requires me to read it devotionally. The ancients called this lectio divina. My reading should have a personally directed prayer in the background, “Lord, what would you have me see, understand, and apply to my life from this Word of Yours?”

Perhaps this personal, devotional approach as over against an in-depth study is like the two different ways you can come to know a frog. You can dissect a dead frog in a biology lab, learning about all it’s inner parts, or you can observe a living frog on a lily pad, discovering and appreciating what a frog’s life is like.

I’m not putting down a scholarly and thoughtful study of God’s Word. We proclaimers of the Holy Scriptures need this discipline as a regular part of our preparation to preach. What I am suggesting is that we first need to read God’s Word for ourselves.

What are your thoughts on this? How do you differentiate your private and public use of God’s Word?

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Preaching from The Soul

June 21, 2012 Leave a comment

I came across this verse in my morning reading.  I thought it very appropriate for those of us who pastor a church.

“Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.” (Psalm 66:16)

Our preaching, at least to some measure, needs to be autobiographical.  We can’t take God’s Word and run it only through our mind before we deliver it to those we serve.  We also must let the scripture flow through our heart and soul.

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