sermon preparation

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Inspiration Can Be Unexpected 

This is a re-post of a blog I published on November 20, 2012. What I wrote is good for me and all of us to keep in mind. Enjoy.

Inspiration can come at any time – sometimes when we least expect it.  This week I was woken up at 5 am with inspiration.  I don’t normally get up at 5.  

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My alarm regularly goes off at 6 am and if it doesn’t, I’m afraid that I would naturally wake up around the time my 21 year old son does on a Saturday.  Does noon sound like a good time to get up?

Five in the morning was pretty early for me to wake up on my own, but there I was, wide awake, looking at the red glowing numbers on our ceiling. 

I like my projection clock because I don’t find the blazing white light of an alarm clock staring me in the face when I turn in bed … that’s too much like heading down a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it! 

This particular morning I wasn’t just awake; I was awake and focused.  My mind was fully engaged and I was ready to get out of bed.  

I had struggled the day before putting my sermon outline together, and just couldn’t see how I should organize what the passage was communicating.  

I was extremely frustrated and my deadline for completing my sermon was clearly on my mind and getting closer.

In the midst of my frustration I did what you are supposed to do when you are in a jam – I prayed. I asked God to help me complete my outline.  

After all, I want to preach what God wants the congregation to hear; it’s really His message.  Maybe that bugged me even more when I didn’t get the outline by the end of the day.

The week before I had been in a similar place and somehow it all came together by Friday.  But that was last week.  That was little comfort given my current situation; I was not happy.

It’s totally quiet in our house at 5 in the morning … not even the turtle is stirring at that time of day.  What woke me up, and what captivated my thoughts was my message.  

I popped out of bed, and for the next hour I finished putting together my outline.  It was all in my head; my mind was brimming with words and verses and how they connected together.  

It wasn’t like I was working; it was more like I was a secretary taking dictation. God had filled my mind with what He wanted communicated. 

I closed my computer at 6:08 and got ready for my 7 am men’s prayer meeting.  

I was energized, my outline was complete, and I wasn’t just ready to write my sermon, I was eager to get at it!  It’s funny how God didn’t give me the outline piece by piece the day before when I had asked Him.  

Instead, He put it all in my head during the night.

Here’s the thing:  I write a sermon every week and I can become comfortable thinking that it is my sermon, my message that He’s helping me complete.  This week God reminded me that it is His message, and His sermon that I preach.  No matter what we do, we work for Him; He doesn’t work for us.  How often do we forget that? 

That’s Life!

Pastor Paul

Question: What has God inspired you with this past year?  Leave your comments below.

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Staring At A Blank Page

This doesn’t happen often but this morning I spent quite a long time staring at a blank computer screen. No, my Mac didn’t freeze.

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It was more that my mind was blank and so I had a nice white page on my screen that didn’t have any words written on it.

If white’s your colour, it was a beautiful sight!

The Beatles have a white album titled, “The BEATLES”, recorded in 1968. And yes, it was completely white with the title embossed on the cover. That album has been dubbed “The White Album” ever since.

But despite all the “white” there was music on the vinyl inside, and that vinyl was all black.

All white isn’t that great when you’re trying to write something like a sermon or a blog.  They call an all-white page “writer’s block”, when you just don’t have anything to put down on the page.

But it’s not that I didn’t have any thoughts at all. While my page was white this morning, I had lots of ideas come to mind; just none of the thoughts I had were worth recording, or I didn’t feel like recording them.

My mind jumped from one topic to another. I would think of something to write about, but then,  for one reason or another, the idea would die in seconds.

I decided to change my scenery and do something else to maybe knock the “block” out of my system – you know, do something radical, like hold your breath when you have the hiccups, or sip a drink of water upside down.

The idea is to reboot your system back to normal.

So I left my white page, and went upstairs to have breakfast. I thought that filling my mouth with food and having a conversation with my wife would somehow spark words in my head that I could then type out onto the white page on my computer.

Sometimes that helps. … The other day I was having trouble with one of the apps on my phone. For some reason it was staying on and burning up my battery at a crazy rate. I powered down my phone, and when I turned it back on, whatever had been stuck on, got unstuck and my phone was working fine again.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help much with my white page. I came back to it and, not only was the page still white, but I still hadn’t come up with anything worthy of adding some black marks to it.

It sure is frustrating when that happens.

I had other things that I wanted to get to, other things I needed to be doing.

I almost left that white page white. And then I thought maybe I should write about having a difficult time putting black characters on a white page.

It didn’t take long until the black marks started to create an amazing contrast on the white page. My white page became a mere backdrop to highlight all the black letters that are now prominent, front and centre.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes you read the Bible and nothing seems to hit home. You feel like giving up on reading it. I believe Henry Blackaby once wrote that when he spends time with God he keeps reading the Bible until God brings something to his attention. Don’t stop reading God’s word because, if you persevere, God will cause those little black characters to stand out and apply to you, right then and there.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do when you are blocked in some way? Leave your comment below.

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If It Gets In My Head, I Can’t Let It Go

Have you ever got something in your head and couldn’t let it go? Songs can get in your head and it’s near impossible to erase them from that ram chip in your skull.

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And it doesn’t take much to get it in there. You hear a song on the radio and it sticks with you all day long.

You might not even like the song, but there you are in a meeting with your superiors and, just as you boss asks you an important question, you have “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor taking up valuable real-estate upstairs.

While you’re trying to think, you’re tapping your pen on the table and under your breath you’re humming “da da da da da”.

You just can’t shake that thought in your head. You’d like to record over it with something useful but it seems that for an undetermined amount of time that thought, that song is going to stick around.

I felt that way this week as I was writing my sermon. I got to near the end and I was in need of a closing illustration.

I thought of a story to use, but the story has been told many times. As I researched it, I discovered that the story has a couple of variations and it’s not even true!

It’s too bad, because it’s a great story of a boy at a concert who slips on stage when no one is watching and starts playing chopsticks on the piano. The audience starts grumbling, but the maestro hears the boy and comes out. He tells the boy to keep playing while he plays around him making beautiful music.

Yes, I know, you’ve heard that story. And yes, I know, you didn’t know it wasn’t true.

The problem was I couldn’t get that story out of my head! It seemed like the right illustration for me. I didn’t want to use it; I didn’t feel I could use it, but I couldn’t get it off my mind.

Every time I tried to think of something else, that story kept replaying for me like it was on a loop track just behind my eye sockets.

I scanned the internet for stories like it and found none. I looked in books where I’ve found some good stories in the past – again nothing. Just that one story.

It was perfect, but I couldn’t use it.

I got sidetracked but the story came back. Time was ticking by. It was evening; my eyes got heavy. I think I dreamed about that story and I was the boy.

And then I came to, and a memory awakened in me.

It was a real-life instance, a modern day parallel to that story. I had seen it on TV about thirteen years ago and somehow my brain found and loaded that story into my jukebox mind for me to play. Press E-10.

Here’s the thing: What we put in our mind stays there, and it will be recalled as needed at random times in the future. So we need to be sure we are storing God’s truth in those minds of ours. For just when we need a verse to encourage or help us, it can drop right into the forefront of our thinking. God’s truth might un-expectantly pop into our minds, and stay with us for the day … and that’s so much better than, “You know I’m all about that bass, no treble.”

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has gotten into your mind lately that you can’t kick out? Leave your comments below.

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My Free Time Got Fried!

Why is it that when time is freed up from one thing, it is so easily filled by something else?

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When you get a break from a regular task or project that gives you all kinds of freedom to work on something else. But what invariably happens is other things and people come along, take bits of that freed up time and leave you with nothing.

I’m not sure anyone else experiences this phenomenon but it happens to me every time I get a break from preaching.

The last two weeks I haven’t had to speak on Sunday which freed up a large amount of time I would spend studying and writing sermons.

That freedom was welcomed because I have some extra events around Christmas, some planning for early in the new year and a sermon to have ready a couple of days after Christmas.

So, though I did not have to preach, I had lots I needed to work on – the freed up time was something I needed.

However, now that I’m at the end of those two weeks, I didn’t get done nearly what I needed to and the hopes of having an easy, no pressure, leisurely Christmas is kind of out the window right now.

There are a few reasons why this happens to me, and I can pretty much predict it to happen every time I get a break from sermon prep.

First, I feel a little freer than normal. Without that thought in the back of my mind of needing to have a message ready for next Sunday, I kind of let my guard down.

I don’t protect my time as much as I do when I have to write a sermon. I will chat with people longer, and be open to making appointments at times I never would if I was working on a message for Sunday.

Secondly, I find that I am less focussed. I might be working on something but then become aware of something else that needs my attention. I will drop what I was working on and start plugging away on this new interest.

I’ll know that I shouldn’t be spending the time on this new project, but my lack of focus keeps me drifting from one thing that catches my fancy to something else.

Thirdly, I find I’m just not as motivated as when I have a sermon to produce. There is something about having the pressure of a deadline that keeps you moving in that direction. But when the pressure is gone, sometimes the motivation is missing too.

What it all comes down to is discipline. When I let my guard down, or am less focussed, or not very motivated, what it really means is I have not disciplined myself to use my time in the best possible way.

Man, next week is going to be busy!

Here’s the thing: When you get out of routine with God, whether that is attending church, spending time with Him alone, serving Him in some capacity, or learning more about Him by yourself or with others, what you find is that time gets used up by other things. If you don’t discipline yourself with God, you will find that you let your guard down to other things, you are less focussed on Him and you lack motivation for God. Stay disciplined.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What gets in the way of your routine with God? Leave your comment below.

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The Challenge Of Deadlines

Every one has deadlines that they have to meet. No matter if it’s highly pressurized, like getting a school paper in on time, or just renewing your driver’s license by your birthdate, we all have deadlines to meet.

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Some people are able to go a long time before they have to meet a deadline; others have deadlines to meet on an ongoing basis.

When I was in school, I thought I had a lot of deadlines. Each class had plenty, so it seemed I had to meet a new deadline every couple of weeks.

When I was done, I had hoped to be free from the pressure of regular deadlines. But I chose the wrong profession because, as a pastor, I have deadlines every week.

There is not a week that goes by that I don’t feel the pressure of having a sermon done by Sunday.  And though someone once said to me, “I thought you just got up there and talked”, it actually takes me all week to be ready to speak.

And there are other deadlines to meet, that I need to schedule for.

But the most pressurized deadlines are those you haven’t planned for, that you can’t plan for. They just appear out of nowhere.

It’s like the tree in my front yard. I saw the leaves turning colour and was really enjoying them. But then one day, out of the blue, those beautiful, coloured leaves started falling off the tree in rapid succession – no warning, just a pile of leaves that needed to be picked up.

When I get those random, unexpected deadlines, the pressure is turned up and some things that don’t have a time limit get put to the side to make room for those new deadlines.

That was the scenario that occurred in my life this past week. (The fact that you’re reading this tells you I survived, but I have to say that I’m hoping for a pretty quiet, restful day today!)

In the course of the week, there were many things that just got turfed to the sidelines. Some of those things included work that didn’t get done, personal time that didn’t materialize, even exercise that had to be put on hold. I had some early mornings and some late nights.

You just hunker down for what has to get done and you let everything else go.

But the most amazing thing about it is that now that it’s over, it doesn’t seem like it was that bad. You kind of forget what it was like … maybe so that you can cope with having to do it again some time.

It must be something like a woman giving birth. With all the pain they go through, you would wonder why a mother would agree to have a second child! But I guess when it’s all done, they just remember the good things – that precious little life that they see before them.

Well, I guess in some strange way, I am satisfied with how my week ended up, and I think more about that than I do all the pressure and work it took to bring it about.

Here’s the thing: We also face things in our lives that will apply pressure to our faith. Some of those things will come out of nowhere. You may find it extremely difficult to deal with, but tackle it with all your focus, because when you’ve come through, you will be able to handle another challenge to your faith when it comes.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you handle unexpected deadlines that come your way? Leave your comment below.

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Turn Your Toil Into Joy 

 

This is a re-post of a blog I published on October 13, 2012. This week I found myself in a very similar situation and this blog spoke to me all over again. Enjoy.

Yesterday I had to work late on my sermon.  It was Friday; I like to be done my sermon by 5 pm but it was obvious that was not going to happen.

working lateEvery week that Sunday deadline stares me in the face; it’s always on my mind.  Some weeks things go well.  I do a little work on my message each day so that the task is broken down.  Monday mornings I make notes on the passage and from commentaries.  Tuesdays, I read supportive material and start to formulate the main idea of the passage.  Wednesdays, I try to create the outline with supportive scripture.  Thursdays, I write a draft of the message.

These days I’ve been dictating that draft. Its an amazing thing, I speak and my computer types the words.  My wife Lily always laughs when I dictate because the program gets some words wrong … like the other day, when I said, “Because the word…” and the program typed “Because Al Gore.”

I’m not sure what Al Gore had to do with my message – it had nothing to do with saving the planet’s environment!  On the other hand, my sermon did have to do with saving people ON the planet.

Fridays, I edit my message, prepare the media presentation and internet support.  This Friday by 4 pm, I had not even started to write the sermon.  It had been a very difficult week, with many interruptions and meetings.

At 4 pm I was tired, and frustrated because focus had been an issue all week for me.  I was not looking forward to spending all evening writing a sermon.  But as I was checking a reference for something, I ran into a quote that struck me.

The quote was from Samuel Chadwick a Methodist preacher. “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying.  He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion.  He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.”

I had just finished praying when I read that, asking God to help me get my sermon done quickly.  But something struck me in that quote; it was the part about Satan laughing at our toil.  My sermon writing felt like toil to me right then.  I was not excited about writing it; I just wanted to be done.

After pondering the quote for a moment, I began to pray again.  This time I asked God to give me a passion for my writing.  I asked Him to fill me with excitement and enthusiasm for what I would put down.  I asked Him to give me joy in writing my message, no matter how long it took.  I asked Him to fill me up with the message He wanted me to bring to my congregation.  I prayed, “Lord, don’t let Satan laugh at the work I am doing.”

The Lord answered my prayer, keeping me focussed and moving ahead as I dictated. He filled my mind with thoughts and words and illustrations.  It was a pleasure to write that message, and I finished before 8 pm.

Here’s the thing:  When we are struggling with something, no matter what it is, it’s always a good thing to pray.  Keep in mind that Satan would love to keep you toiling and prayerless.  Do the opposite.  Pray and watch God make your work a joy.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do when you find your task is more toil than joy?  Leave your comments below.

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How To Listen To A Presentation 

As a giver of presentations, I’m not often on the listening end of them. So the other day in church, when I was listening to someone give the message, I found my mind going in lots of directions.

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It’s not easy to listen; it’s difficult to stay engaged with the speaker.

I noticed first off that the message was going to be about light. I knew that because, before the pastor got up to preach, they showed a video about Christ being the light of the world.

The video was good and I wanted to know more about this light show that he was going to talk about. I started looking at the lights on stage and thought it was cool how they could change colour.

But I also noticed how dark the auditorium was and thought they could throw a little more light on the platform.

At the beginning of the message, the pastor read the passage and I noticed it was particularly long and filled with a host of possible ideas. I began to wonder how he was going to handle this length of text.

I couldn’t help myself thinking that I would make this passage into a series and preach several sermons from it.

The preacher was doing pretty good – people laughed when he said something funny – but I started getting concerned that he wasn’t talking about light as much as other things.

I wanted him to come back to the light in two ways: I wanted him to step into the light – like a spotlight or something – so I could see him better, and I wanted him to tell me more about the impact of Christ being the light of the world.

I also started to wonder if this message was something that he got on the internet and was re-preaching or if it was something he wrote himself and really believed. I spent a little time trying to tell if he really owned his message.

My seat was at such an angle that I could see people sitting across the auditorium. I looked at them to see if they were listening, day dreaming, bored, or engaged in what he was saying.

I saw a few nods of the head and could tell they agreed with what was being said. But there was this one guy whose nodding looked more like a guy on a hot bus is trying to stay awake after a long day at work!

And while I was thinking about all that, I realized something similar happens to all the people who are listening to me preach every week. . . . It’s a tough job to give a presentation!

Here’s the thing: It’s easy to settle into a presentation and start thinking about all kinds of things related and unrelated to what is being said. It’s easy because you don’t have to apply it to yourself. You don’t have to think deeply and personally about the material. But the idea of a presentation is that it is for your personal benefit. It’s for you, your ministry, your work, or your personal development.

So, though all kinds of thoughts come to distract you, to keep you from applying the message, your job as a presentation listener is to focus on how it has a bearing on you. Keep three questions running through your mind while you listen: 1. What is true here for me? 2. God, what are you saying to me? 3. What am I now going to do with this?

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you stay focussed in a presentation? You can leave your comment below.

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Sleepless In . . . Kingston!

I just had one of those nights where you find yourself wide awake at 2 am. I’m not sure if this kind of thing is contagious, but a friend of mine was telling me the day before how he had had a sleepless night.

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The very next night, like someone had sneezed right in my face, I rolled around in my bed like I was doing laps at the track.

It makes you crazy when you can’t stop thinking about something, even though you can’t solve it. It just hangs on in your mind. And even when you try to redeem the time by thinking about something else, you always come back to that unrelenting, unpleasant thought or issue.

And, after a while, you realize that unless you do something, you will not be able to sleep at all.

When I get to that stage, I just get up. I need to change my position; I need to get away from the heavy breathing of someone deep in sleep beside me.

So, the other night I got out of bed, went downstairs and started to work on my sermon for the next week. So what if it was Monday morning at 2 am? I have some of my best and most creative thoughts at that time of night.

I worked on my sermon and made great headway until about 3:30 am when I thought I’d better try to sleep. Even though I was still very awake and stimulated from my late night study time, I grabbed a blanket, laid down on the couch and turned the TV on.

If there is anything that will put me to sleep it’s the TV – not those infomercials though, they get me thinking of things I could make or buy. (I think I wrote once about the ab-dolly my son and I made after watching an infomercial.)

No, I need some kind of drama. In my flicking through the channels I came across a TV show I like, called “Castle”. It’s a detective show where a mystery writer helps the police solve crimes.

But the only crime I wanted solved was catching the guy who stole my sleep so far that night! And don’t worry, I won’t give away the show’s ending – only because I can’t … I was asleep in probably 15 minutes.

Actually, all I need is two things to put me to sleep: TV and being horizontal. It works every time. It works for Sunday NFL games, TV shows, and for romantic movies my wife sometime cons me into watching with her.

In the morning it was Lil who woke me up. I had slept through three alarms and never heard one of them. She came down wanting the room for her workout. So I trudged upstairs, and crawled into bed. But by then the day had started in my mind and it wasn’t long before I was up and moving.

… Maybe a little slower than normal, mind you.

Here’s the thing:  Sometimes we are awake because we’ve seen or experienced something that has shocked us. Sometimes it’s just indigestion from bad pizza late at night. But one thing you can do to redeem the time is spend it with God. In those quiet hours, when nothing is moving except your mind, take the time to talk to God. He may have something to say to you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can trigger a sleepless night for you? Leave your comment below.

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What You Do When You Have Words To Say But No Voice

I have no voice and only one day now to find it. Tomorrow I will be preaching at church and today I sound like Marlon Brando from the Godfather.

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For that movie, I understand they put cotton balls in his cheeks to help give him that sound. I don’t need the cotton, it’s all natural, listen … “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”.   Not bad, eh?

I know you can’t hear that but, take it from me, I sound just like Don Corleone. And that’s my problem! I need to sound like Paul Silcock by tomorrow at 10:30 am, so you can bet I will be trying all the remedies I’ve heard in the past.

I’ll be checking the internet for solutions, because I understand doctors do that, too. Today I’m going to soothe my throat with some “Fisherman’s Friends” lozenges … hourly.

I don’t really like the taste of them but they’re supposed to be great if you’re fishing in the ocean around the Bay of Fundy on a stormy day. I’ll only be trolling for amens in a warm and dry sanctuary tomorrow, so they should work there, too.

If my mother-in-law finds out what state I’m in she will be pushing echinacea on me. I had a difficult time finding the spelling for echinacea and that goes with the difficult time I have in figuring out what it actually does.

But that doesn’t matter. My mother-in-law thinks echinacea works for pretty much any ailment you might have.

I’m not one for taking medicine of any kind, but I think I might have to take a trip to the drug store and find some magic elixir that will do something to my throat to release my vocal chords from the prison they find themselves in right now.

Then there is my congregation to think about. They may enjoy a more soft spoken, gentler, mafia-sounding preacher for a change.

I think if I ended my sermon with something like “Today God’s making you an offer you can’t refuse”, I may need some help with all the people that might come forward.

I’m really glad that I live in this time period; I have so many help options to choose from. If I lived an hundred years ago, not only would I not have many solutions, I probably wouldn’t have a microphone to help magnify my voice.

One thing is for sure, I’m not putting Vicks VapoRub on my chest. My mother did that to me as a kid, and I hated it. Now I have hair on my chest; there is just no way I’m dealing with that mess!

Nor will I try my Dad’s old remedy of eating onion sandwiches. He would get those little onions and slice them up, arrange the slices on two pieces of toast and enjoy. He probably got that idea from my grandmother. I hate onions.

Well I’ll let you know what happens.

Here’s the thing: There are many things I could do to help my sore throat, and I will try some. But the thing that I’m counting on, what I’m putting my hope in, is God making my voice work tomorrow. I’m praying that He will give me a voice. That doesn’t mean I won’t try anything else, but He’s my first and main source of help for my situation.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you treat a sore throat or laryngitis? Leave your comment below.

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So . . . I’m Easily Distracted

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.

distracted guy

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.