Brian Marshall, our Pastor of First Impressions said something in our staff meeting on Monday that I have been processing. He said that someone once told him that "if there was ever a time in your life that you were closer to Christ than you are right now, then you have backslidden."
I have thought alot about that.
Almost every pastor that I know will tell you that the line between study for Sunday messages and personal devotion time is very blurred. It can be tempting to substitute message prep for personal quiet time with God.
In a recent Pastors Roundtable that I participated in, this topic came up, and someone said that the key to delivering great messages was learning to preach from the overflow. The "overflow" that they were talking about was the overflow of what God was teaching them from their quiet time with God and what God was speaking into their lives on a personal level.
You can't preach from the overflow, if there is nothing that is overflowing.
David says in Psalm 23:5b, "You annoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."
So, the question we need to ask ourselves is; "has there ever been a time that I was closer to God than I am right now?" If so, what are we going to do about it?
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