I’m scheduled to preach a sermon in class tomorrow.  Yeah, preaching in class.  Sounds like fun.

I tried sharing the message with the youth group tonight, and it just didn’t go over very well.

I wish I could just change the passage I’ve selected altogether and use something that tells a story instead of a passage where a point is proven.  Since the point of the passage is to prove what’s being said, it doesn’t really leave a lot for me to say.  Except tell a few stories I guess.

But the real difficulty is that this whole thing is coming out of study that I’m doing in order to get a grade…. I mean, it’s not really inspired.  I’ve read some of the stuff that I’ve shared with the youth over the course of the Fall, and some of it’s been really good — I mean, I’m pretty critical of myself most of the time, but some of this stuff really gets to the point.  And those are the times when I’ve faced a task where I’m not concerned about getting a grade, but I’m concerned about speaking from God’s heart through my heart to their heart.

If there’s one thing — and there’s probably more than one thing really — that I’ll take with me from my preaching class this semester, it’s that the messages that come from the heart are the ones that are easy to give, and the ones that really address the needs of the people.  That’s what I want to always keep in mind.