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One time, I decided to cook a surprise meal for my family. I cook for them fairly often, so Dad in the kitchen wasn’t the surprise. The key is, because it was to be a surprise, I didn’t check that I was doing the right meal.
Steak was in the fridge – lots of it, and ready to cook. So, a quick searing to seal in the flavour, loads of fresh ingredients and we ended up with a gorgeous looking meal.
Which was quite inedible. Because that steak wasn’t fresh, tender, eat-me-so-rare-you-can-still-hear-the-moo. It was braising steak, that needed many hours to tenderise and share its flavour.
I forget what we ate that night, but I didn’t cook it.
Today I was preaching, after a really busy week, and with less time than I would like to have given to it. I’d known for some time that this week was going to be somewhat stretched, and so I had planned ahead with some prep, and deliberately used the material in a conference seminar a couple of weeks ago, But Life had happened in a big way as well, and I arrived this morning less ready than I would like.
Now, I don’t want to exaggerate. This wasn’t quite the disaster that the meal had been, but it felt uncomfortably close to me. Even though I’d thought and prayed about the sermon, something that should have been on a slow simmer had been microwaved, and I could tell the difference.
God is kind, and he uses sermons like that. (In fact, all our sermons look like that from his eternal perspective, anyway). But I could tell the difference, and I know I didn’t give him, or his people, my best.
And I know that if I preached every time like that, everybody else would start to spot the difference too.
So I keep banging on about the time it takes to prepare a sermon and planning ahead, not so that we can get more done, but so we can think and pray over a longer period. You and I need that time.
Let those sermons simmer.
ministrynutsandbolts.com 
Yep! Gotta let a sermon breathe and simmer before they are ready!
Chris, I did wonder why your sermon didn’t involve a flipchart this time! But it didn’t come across as unprepared to me at all.
Still, this is good advice, unless you happen to be Spurgeon:
“I am always sure to have the most happy day when I get a good text in the morning from my Master. When I have had to preach two or three sermons in a day, I have asked Him for the morning subject, and preached from it; and I have asked Him for the afternoon’s topic or the evening’s portion, and preached from it, after meditating on it for my own soul’s comfort, — not in the professional style of a regular sermon-maker, but feasting upon it for myself. Such simple food has done the people far more good than if I had been a week in manufacturing a sermon, for it has come warm from the heart just after it has been received in my own soul; and therefore it has been well spoken, because well known, well tasted, and well felt”
Unfortunately I’m not, so back to the week-long drawing board for me.
Nor me, Phil. Fortunately, I think most of the great ones did take their time more, so there’s no need to feel quite so hustled by Charlie!
It’s like a good cuppa – you have to let it brew