In a week I will have the opportunity to preach at the Moravian Church in Hope, Indiana – the town where I taught English not too long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n
I can’t tell you how excited I am.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Or how scared.<\/p>\n\n\n
And I am not scared just because I might be a little out of practice in both writing and delivering a sermon. Or because I will know a few people in the congregation. And not know all of the others. Or because I have to deliver the sermon at two services that morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I get scared because I consider preaching to be a momentous responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Paul exhorted young Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.<\/i>” (2 Timothy 2:15)<\/p>\n\n\n
My preaching professor back in my seminary days reminded us of\u00a0\u00a0all the biblical warnings against false teachers and how we must <\/b><\/i>be faithful to Scripture in our preaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
He\u00a0was fond of saying, “Don’t forget – as soon as you step into the pulpit, you double your chances of going to hell.”<\/p>\n\n\n
“Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.<\/i>” – James 3:1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a week I will have the opportunity to preach at the Moravian Church in Hope, Indiana – the town where I taught English not too long ago. I can’t tell you how excited I am.\u00a0 Or how scared. And I am not scared just because I might be a little out of practice in […]<\/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-2699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699","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=2699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}