{"id":2267,"date":"2021-10-28T23:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T23:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2267"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:38","slug":"when-not-to-preach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2267","title":{"rendered":"WHEN NOT TO PREACH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I heard a sermon recently on the subject of fasting. The preacher explained what it was and why we should do it, and challenged the congregation to practice fasting from food on a regular basis, perhaps one day a week. He had a couple of inspirational quotes about fasting that felt like they were gathered by Googling &#8220;inspirational quotes about fasting&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But overall, he came across almost apologetic for bringing the subject up in the first place and made jokes about how fasting is everybody&#8217;s &#8220;favorite&#8221; topic.\u00a0\u00a0I think it was within the first five minutes or so that he admitted with a chuckle that he himself is &#8220;lucky to fast once or twice a year&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, yes, it was kind of disastrous.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I felt bad for him because usually he is on top of things in the pulpit.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This particular sermon left me hoping that maybe he discovered in the rubble something I learned years ago when I was preaching on a regular basis: If you&#8217;re not living it, you better at least feel convicted of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re neither, you best not preach it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard a sermon recently on the subject of fasting. The preacher explained what it was and why we should do it, and challenged the congregation to practice fasting from food on a regular basis, perhaps one day a week. He had a couple of inspirational quotes about fasting that felt like they were gathered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2268,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267\/revisions\/2268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}