LABOR AND DELIVERY

It is Saturday as I pen these words, and every pastor knows what that means—it is approaching Sunday’s sermon time!  Like a pregnant woman, the sermon has been conceived, developed, and now with labor must be delivered.  We do not want our church family to experience the tragedy of anticipation, only for the message to be stillborn!  Our prayer is for a living Word for the people of God to celebrate!  The big difference is that our sermon doesn’t have nine months to mature.  The due date comes once a week—even multiple times during the week!

It really is not so much about the sermon itself, but the object of it: to glorify God and grow people in Christ. Paul used that imagery in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.”  The labor and delivery of the sermon is how the Spirit works to accomplish this. 

That’s a pressure pastors must live with—but it is also a privilege they enjoy.  Mothers certainly have some problems and pains in pregnancy—more pronounced and intensifying exponentially as the infant makes its debut.  But, how quickly that is forgotten when the wee one arrives—with joy the child is embraced!

So, my brother, I pray that you are almost ready for the trip to the delivery room that we call the auditorium, and tomorrow afternoon will find you exhausted, but exhilarated.  Once more God has enabled a miracle of life we call preaching to be birthed.  Having been in the delivery room as our children have arrived, it can be described in no other way.  You are caught up in the moment, lost in wonder, heart racing, and I don’t know how the human body can do what it does as a woman delivers a child—or a man delivers a sermon—but new life is ushered into the world.

For fifty years, I have gone through this cycle.  I wish I could say that none of the sermons were stillborn, but I can say that few have been.  The Father has been faithful to implant the seed of Scripture in my mind, fertilize it by His Spirit, and then the remarkable creative act is completed as the labor and delivery of the message brings another living Word into the world.