How to Preach Inspiring Sermons

Write a sermon that inspires and your people will rise and call you blessed. Preach sermons that bore, and the theological depth will often be ignored. Preach inspiring sermons with theological depth and you will be a faithful minister of the Word.

Instructions

1. ~ Determine to be inspired ~

   That may seem a strange commitment to make. How does one choose to be inspired? That's exactly what we do, though, when we engage in writing sermons. We choose to be inspired by a text that we believe is inspired. Amazing changes happen when we approach anything expecting to be inspired. The result is, we most often do end up inspired. Assume you will be inspired by a child, a leaf, a spring day, a movie, or a song and you most likely will be. Determine to be inspired by your passage and refuse to give up until you are, and you will be inspired and breath an inspired sermon.

2. ~ Pray for inspiration ~

   Some people will think this super-spiritual and naive, but preaching is a spiritual activity predicated on the faith of a child. So, do the super-spiritual and naive, and pray. Pray desperately and for some length of time about the passage you have chosen or been given. Ask God to inspire you, not just the sermon. Sermons are inspired because preachers become inspired.

3. ~ Write down what comes to mind in prayer ~

   St. Francis of Assissi challenged his friars to always move from prayer to preaching to prayer with the phrase ora et labore et ora. It means pray and work and pray. Weave in and out of conversation with your text and conversation with God. Speak out loud your questions about the text to God, to the text, and to yourself. When things come to mind in prayer times, however, write them down. Do not assume they are direct words from God, but examine them for the seeds of inspiration.

4. ~ Press passages up against real life (this is the nature of sermons) ~

   Write some key phrases from the passage for your sermon on a note card and take them with you throughout the week. Pull them out from time to time and look at the passage through the eyes of life. This can bring to mind sermon illustrations, examples, questions, challenges, or deep insights. These are all inspirations that might have been lacking from the sermon otherwise.

5. ~ Seek inspiration from others ~

   Get out of your office, or at least on your phone, during your sermon preparation. Ask others what they think of the sermon. Talk to janitors and executives, mothers and grandfathers, Christians and prison inmates. Speak to people with chocolate, vanilla, and caramel skin tones to see it through their eyes. Get the sermon out of your own skin, into others skin, then bring it back into your own skin again.

6. ~ Look for ways the text turns things upside down, around, ~

   The best sermons often take what we thought the passage meant and turn it upside down in one way or another. This cannot happen with every interpretation or we would be merely turning ourselves in circles.

   * See more preaching tips below.

Tips & Warnings

• As you preach your sermon, attempt to feel again the inspiration of the week. Don't say more, feel more.

• Shoot to not only reexperience the sermon but to help your congregation experience similar experiences.

• Allow your sermon to be totally preoccupied with the inspired preoccupation of the text.

• See related articles on this page for more help and information on preaching inspiring sermons.