Preaching: 1 Difference Maker made famous by Jesus, Paul, and Stephen

I love preaching, teaching, and communicating. Chances are, you do too.

And I have noticed this about preaching; sometimes people preach hard and it connects.. You hear God Word's preached with passion, accuracy, and humility and wow... God really uses the speaker as a vessel.


And sometimes people preach hard and they come across a little jerk-ish.. A little hypocritical. A little like the preacher had it together and we (the audience) needed to get up to his level asap..



So...Is there anyway we ensure we connect more and come across jerk-ish less?

Yesterday, God reminded me of a simple principle that enables us to have a better chance of connecting when we preach God's Word.

"We have to genuinely LOVE our audience."

Not like. LOVE.


This sounds like a no-brainer principle, but stay with me for just a minute and my prayer is that God reminds you of what He reminded me of yesterday..

Jesus, Paul, and Stephen. What do they have in common?

1) They preached HARD..

Jesus- need I illustrate?

Paul- boldly preached the Word and didn't pull his punches..

Stephen- told the Jewish council that you guys just crucified the Messiah and you missed it just like your ancestors did when they killed the prophets..

These guys preached HARD..
These guys connected.
But these guys LOVED the people they were preaching to..


Jesus, on the cross, asked God to "forgive them for they don't know what they are doing." He says this speaking of the people who arrested him, charged him on bogus crimes, and ultimately killed him. (Luke 23:34)

He LOVED them.

Paul- says in Romans 9, that if it were possible for him to go to hell for some of his jewish brothers (even though he knew it wasn't possible) so that they might receive Christ, he would do it..

He LOVED them.

Stephen while he is being killed by the people who didn't take kindly to his message, prayed "God do not hold this sin against them." (Acts 7:60)


He LOVED them.

They didn't kind of like the audience but loved to hear themselves speak..

They loved their audience and they preached hard.

And God used them and their ministries is AMAZING ways..

So as we teach, preach, speak, communicate (whatever you want to call it), this week;

May we preach the Word accurately and passionately..

And may we teach with THIS KIND OF LOVE for our audience..

Thankful God reminded me of this yesterday,

Brian.