The (scared) Oracle of God

Normally after I preach I get a good number of people saying nice things about my sermon. Mostly they are trying to be encouraging, some are simply being polite, and one or two do actually mean it.

This Sunday I had to preach at both our morning services. I have done the 9:30 before, but this was my first time speaking at the 11:00.

I didn’t feel I had prepared very well. I have not had a ‘spiritual’ week. The allocated passage didn’t lend itself to theological exegesis; it was a more practical thing, so I just had some pictures on a power point presentation and talked around the pictures. When I stood up to speak in the 9:30 my mind went completely blank, and I struggled to recover.

But afterwards, a whole stream of people came to me, not with the usual platitudes, but with a genuine sense of having been touched in the heart and convicted by the Holy Spirit. I was left with a strong sense that somehow I had actually spoken the word of God to these people.

For the second service, I knew before I said a word that it would not be so good, because it was clear by now that the message had been for the first service. So afterwards there were some people who had attended both services that said I was better the second time round. Technically, perhaps so. But I did not get the same stream of people who had been touched, just the usual numbers of encouraging/polite. Same sermon, delivered better, yet less impact.

To be honest, I am comfortable in a church where we go through the motions and have our nice ceremonies in a conventional way. But when God himself shows up, it really makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It literally scares me. I know that ‘my sermon’ was not very good in itself, but I also know that God himself somehow inhabited those words and had his way and communicated HIS message.

That is scary.

But….even more so….if people start to treat me as the oracle of God, and then I say something that is wrong and leads people into sin…then I really am in trouble.

Postscript….when I was young, I found people usually ignored me. So I started colouring my stories to make them interesting, and they became increasingly wild. Then people became interested and started to believe me…something new which I didn’t know how to handle. And it was also embarrassing because now I had to admit that I had exaggerated, so I ended up with even less credibility than I started with.