Writing a sermon is a curious thing. I’ve been writing them weekly for over 17 years now and I still haven’t found a formula that makes the process easy and predicable. There are parts that I have systematized, but the actual sit down and write part, it’s like a new adventure every week.

Let me give you a little insight into my week. I’m pretty regimented early in the week because I know if I’m not ready to write by Thursday, the end of the week will be a disaster.  And we don’t like disasters, do we?

When I first started to preach, I worried about staying up all night Saturday to get ready for Sunday morning. That fear was real because every paper I ever wrote from high school until the day I graduated with my degree, involved burning the midnight oil.

The day after a paper was due I was a zombie. I needed coffee bad – except I didn’t drink coffee, so I’d substitute Super Big Gulps to get me through.

There was no way I would be able to sustain a weekly routine like that for very long. So I decided I needed to have a routine for preparing messages: I start on Monday and do a little work each day.

But I don’t start writing until Thursday or Friday and that’s when all the scheduling, routine, and systematizing goes out the window. It’s new every week. There are distractions, interruptions, unexpected issues to deal with.

But probably the worst issue of all is me. I need to be mentally and emotionally ready to write my sermon. And if I’m not, oh baby, it’s going to be a long day.

That’s what it was like this week. I had a great Thursday, finished my outline, even wrote the introduction to my message. But Friday … I just couldn’t get my mind to settle down. I might have ADD – but in my day the medication for that was a slap on the back side of the head and a scolding of “PAY ATTENTION!”

So Friday I was on my own with no chemicals or synthetics to bring my mind into sync with my sermon. My mind even had the added bonus of a few interruptions to my day that lured it to wander in unnecessary directions long after the interruptions ceased.

By the afternoon, everything and anything was a distraction. The lint that glistened in the light streaming through my window caught my attention for a while. I read an email that lead me to a website which led me to watch a video debate on science versus creation.

My message is not on creation this week. It was interesting, but I couldn’t even extract an illustration to work into my sermon. I was so distracted that I forgot I had brought a lunch to work, so I went out and bought my noon meal, only to come back and see my lunch sitting on a table in my office!

It came in handy because I worked so late I ate that forgotten lunch for dinner and kept working.

Here’s the thing: You may not get distracted like me, but every one of us runs into distractions of some kind. When we get distracted from serving God or spending time with Him, that’s when it’s time to employ a strategy to deal with those distractions and get back on course.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How have you been distracted in the past?  Leave your comment below.