Never satisfied.  I wonder if I will always feel that way about my sermons.  I remember reading that Charles Spurgeon, regularly wept after sermons out of fear of having dishonored the Lord unintentionally.  If the "Prince of Preachers" struggled with sermon contentment, then I can expect this "pauper of preachers" to live in the same tension.  Preaching is hard and pastors are their worst critics.  Unlike many occupations, results are not always immediate--fruit takes time to grow.  More often than not, I feel like preaching is akin to tilling hardened soil with a broken tool. Perhaps this is God's way of making preachers desperate for His Spirit and assuring He gets the glory whether they are or not.  The last sermon I preached was Judges 2.7-11, title, Generational Unfaithfulness. This weekly blog is where I reflect on the sermon, here are the points that I would want to repeat, reject, [...]

The second sermon in our series on Judges, titled {UN}faithfulness, centers on the progressive, but deliberate, disobedience of God's people.  The video can be found here.  The passage contains a lot of verses, 41 to be exact.  It is not often we read that many verses in a service, but whenever I do, there is deep level of satisfaction as the my finite words are drowned out by the eternal words of Scripture.  It reminds me of Paul's charge to a young pastor named Timothy was to "devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture" (1Tim 4.13). We would do well to do this more. Not only was the text long, it was complicated. As a purely historical narrative, Judges would make a lot more sense if it started in chapter 2. The first chapter is strange, containing three seemingly unrelated vignettes including an assassination, a romance, and an operation of Israel’s "Seal [...]

Last Sunday was our final sermon in the four-part "Paul & series".  The series focused on what we consider to be our "family traits"—the essential qualities that we hope characterize the people of Damascus Road Church.  I say hope because we're sinners and will, until we die, consistently fall short of God's glory.  In other words, we will never perfectly exemplify these traits as we ought; in this life they are disciplined pursuits we aim to mature in as the gospel goes deeper into our hearts.In the past four weeks, we examined what these traits looked like in the various relationships the apostle Paul had with others. From Paul & Barnabas we learned how the gospel transforms us into an encouraging people; a people devoted to helping others hope in the cross in our failures and to boast of the cross in our successes. From Paul & Peter we learned [...]