People search Google almost four million times per minute and watch a billion hours of video on YouTube every day. The question we should all be asking is, Will they find Jesus there?
An unchristian message about discipleship or the Christian life is one where our effort is the only solution to the problem. It’s the message that says, “Be a good person” and “Just try harder.” Or worse yet, “You’re a terrible person; look how bad you are.” These messages create Pharisees, not Christians. So how do you avoid teaching an unchristian message from the Bible? Let me offer four questions to ask any time you prepare a talk whether it’s for a youth group, a Sunday School class, or even your own kids.
I was speaking with another pastor once and they told me they felt that there were two different kinds of preachers: there are those who fill their messages with personal stories and anecdotes and those who give their congregations the meat of the Word of God. The disdain with which he described the people in the first camp made it clear to me that he felt that illustrations diluted a message. The more Bible the better. I understood his point, but I don’t think the two extremes he compared or the conclusions he drew were helpful. Let me explain what I believe to be the purpose and value of illustrations, so if you’re ever asked to teach a Bible lesson or give a talk to a youth group or seniors meeting, you’ll know when to use them and how.
Some people love to dig into the original setting of the Bible passage they’re teaching. When done poorly, these messages can sound like history lectures. Other people are determined to be more relevant. It feels easier to apply, but it’s not always clear whether the message came from the Bible or whether something was lost in translation. Let’s consider how to cross the bridge into the setting of the Bible and then back across the bridge into the present context.
I thought that the goal of a message from the Bible was to tell people what the Bible says and how it applies to our lives. But I was missing a crucial step that’s essential to avoid losing people as you speak. I didn’t realize the importance of organizing my talk around a central idea. Let me share why that’s important and how you can do it.
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.
Kacey Musgraves’ 2013 hit, Follow Your Arrow, expresses the frustrations that many people grapple with. It talks about the weight of people’s expectations and the pain of not being able to please people. What do you do when people’s expectations are crushing you?
He’s essentially come to the conclusion that life is meaningless and insignificant, so he recommends just enjoying it. As you hear him talk about the freedom and happiness he enjoys, you start to wonder whether it matters if life has any meaning or not.
You don’t have to be following Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against Amber Heard to know how dangerous anger can be when it’s out of control. We all know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a person’s anger. And we’ve also seen the damage that our own anger has caused. There are 4 specific roles that God alone can fill in helping us to deal with our anger in constructive ways.
We often assume that somebody that pretty or that successful couldn’t be lonely. It’s like we assume loneliness is the penalty that you get for not measuring up in the game of life. Not only is that not true, but it adds the weight of condemnation to the pain of loneliness itself. Loneliness affects just about everyone at different points in their life, but it comes in different forms. Consider the 4 voices of loneliness and how you can answer them.