If you want to preach or teach effectively you have to have two questions running in your mind all the time. Here are the questions that run in my mind all week every week as I prepare my heart to preach the living word to dying men. As I communicate the love of God and the truth of God to people God loves who need the truth these are a couple questions I have in my heart.
1. Why did God want the original author to say this and why did God want the original audience to hear this?
What was the author’s intent? What was the original setting like? Why would the original author say this or write this to the original audience? What was the original author’s world like? What was the world of the original audience like? How did this truth impact them?
2. Why does God want me to teach this truth to the my congregation on Sunday?
Why does this truth matter to the people I will preach to on Sunday? How does God want this truth to impact their lives and transform them? How does the Holy Spirit want to use this truth in the lives of the people sitting in front of me with Bibles in their laps and a hundred competing thoughts running through their minds?
If you answer those two questions you will explain the truth in clear terms, you will illustrate that truth to make it plain, and you will apply to show way the truth matters to them.
Let me know if you want to talk about this.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
April 22, 2016
