8 Ways to Pray During Sermon Preparation
By Most pastors develop a rhythm with their sermon preparation. You find a way that “works” for you and you pretty much stick with it. But until you have the pattern established, it can be messy. And one of the areas with which I struggled at the beginning was how prayer fit into my sermon preparation.
I knew that I should pray, that in fact I must pray, as part of getting ready to teach God’s Word. But I don’t remember getting much advice about how to pray when preparing a message. And while there’s obviously not just one helpful way to do it, here are eight brief prayers that can be used while writing a sermon:
1. Lord, please help me to understand the meaning of this text and how it points to Christ.
2. Lord, please increase my love for the people who will hear this sermon.
3. Lord, please give me wisdom to apply this text to the lives of the people in our congregation.
4. Lord, please use this passage to help me grasp and love the gospel more so that I might help my hearers do the same.
5. Lord, please help me to see how this passage confronts the unbelief of my hearers.
6. Lord, please help me to be obedient to the demands of this passage. Help me to enter the pulpit having already submitted my life to this truth before I preach it.
7. Lord, by your Spirit please help me to preach this sermon with the necessary power and with appropriate affections.
8. Lord, please use this sermon to bring glory to your name, joy to your people, and salvation to the lost.
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Very timely post, as I was just spending some time finishing up this week's sermon. Thanks for the great thoughts!
This is a cool list and one I may look at again.
I always pray for the fear of the Lord before I preach a message. Fear is the face of the awesome privilege and weighty responsibility of manifesting His word to His people (Titus 1:3).
great exercise to simply pray and truly ask God to be apart of the process when you start as well as during. Had some great conversations about prep time and they were telling me how the holy spirit guides them in the moment, and my response was isn't he guiding you on monday as much on sunday? This prayer encouragement points to engaging with God on monday just as much as the moments before you preach! thanks for bringing it!
Thanks!! great time to be posted!
Thanks Michael, a very helpful post. I was helped in my sermon preparation by some of the suggestions of prayer. For example, #5, you made me think about how the passage I'm preaching on Sunday confronts unbelief in my congregation.
I've preached many years and have scatter-gunned these prayer over sermons. Thanks be to God for young men like you, Mike, whom the Lord has gifted to provide such a succinct and instructive summary.
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