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If you’ve ever been asked to teach a Sunday School lesson or give a devotional to a youth group or a seniors’ meeting, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Just because you’ve sat through a bunch of sermons and Bible studies, it doesn’t mean that you understand what makes them work when they do or fall apart when they don’t. Let’s dissect some of the most common reasons an otherwise interesting Bible message lacks power or impact. Then, hopefully, next time you have an opportunity to give a talk, you’ll know where to start.

1. Maybe you started with how instead of what

It’s easy to collapse the different steps of preparation in Bible teaching. We do this in many aspects of life. We talk about going to the dentist when in fact this is almost always a 2-part event involving a lengthy cleaning with a dental hygienist followed by a brief assessment by the dentist. When you’re going to give a talk from the Bible, it’s easy to combine how and what and mix up delivery and content. Let me explain how this happens. You get your passage, you quickly identify the theme, and then you start thinking about stories or props or illustrations that relate to the theme. Doing that is like having the dentist do the assessment before the hygienist has finished the cleaning. You can’t think about how to deliver a message until you’re finished figuring out what the message is that you’re trying to communicate. If you’re going to give a talk from the Bible, don’t think about teaching from the Bible until you’ve been taught by the Bible. Forget about the lesson at first and just be a student and learn as much about the passage as you can. A “great illustration” on your theme may actually distract you from seeing what the passage says and once you’ve settled on a catchy title or interesting opening, it may be difficult to give it up. Start with what and only then move to how.

2. Maybe it was your message from the Bible, not God’s

As you begin to read a passage to understand its message, the most dangerous thing you can do is assume you know what it means, or worse, impose your message on the passage. I once heard a great sermon on praising the Lord from Psalm 117. The speaker passionately and practically exhorted us about our attitude in church and how we should sing from our heart and glorify God in how we participate in Sunday worship. The sermon was heart-felt and enthusiastically delivered. The problem was that Psalm 117, while beginning and ending with the words “Praise the LORD” is addressed to “all nations” and “all peoples.” In fact, the psalm is only 2 verses long and really doesn’t have anything to do with how Christians worship at church at all. It’s an appeal to unbelievers to worship God rooted in a believer’s personal testimony of God’s past goodness and promise of His future mercies.

Never decide what you want to say and then go to the Bible to find a verse or two to read before you say it. Your goal is to understand God’s message on a particular theme and so you constantly want to ask yourself, what is He trying to teach here? Because God used human authors to communicate His will, you also need to ask yourself what that author was trying to say. Any study Bible will preface a book of the Bible with an explanation of who wrote the book, to whom, when, and why. Take the time to read this and then when you read the passage try to hear the message as the original readers would have.

3. Maybe you never drilled down deep enough

Even if you start with the Bible rather than your delivery and communicate the Bible’s message rather than your own, if you only ever skim the surface of a passage, it will always feel light. God’s Word is “like fire … and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces” (Jeremiah 23:29) and “sharped than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12), but in order for our message to communicate that power it has to be sufficiently supported by God’s Word. That doesn’t mean that we have to quote a million verses, but we do need to drill down far enough into God’s Word that we grasp the fullness of its meaning and the breadth of its impact. The time you spend studying a passage will give weight to your message and authority to your words. Read and reread the passage. Get input from study Bibles and commentaries. Dig into the words, think about the message, and let God’s Word affect you before you try to share it in a way that it reaches others.

Obviously, just studying a passage isn’t all you need to get right in preparing a talk or a Bible lesson, but it is the most crucial step. In future episodes we’ll walk through the other building blocks necessary to prepare to teach. With all of these, prayer and a reliance on God will help guide and direct you. May you experience His enabling!

In awe of Him,

Paul