“Every minister has preached some lousy sermons, and I have too. Obviously we tried to keep them out of this book! This collection is eclectic – no pretension that these are the best I’ve preached.”
Those are the first lines of the introduction to a collection of my sermons titled “Word Alive!” It’s just published and available at www.tripillarpublishing.com and at Amazon.
Accompanying each of the 52 sermons is a Retrospective, often reflecting how the world has changed and how I might write the sermon differently today. I strove to be honest; growth in preaching is long and slow maturation, bumps along the way. Each sermon also has “For Further Reflection” with questions and Bible passages for further study. Looking back at old sermons, I faced the fact, “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
Apropos to these days before Christmas, is the conclusion from “Not a Creature Was Stirring,” preached December 4, 1985.
‘Twas the night before Jesus came, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse;
Some stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
And, yes, thoughts that Saint Nicholas soon would be there;
But in our lives there was no Christmas clatter.
We are still before the Lord, what else can matter?
We’ve opened our Bibles, uplifted our hands –
and what to our wondering eyes has appeared?
God stirs up His power; Jesus is here.
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