Preach to Yourself

I am part of a home church currently, and in that setting we rotate who teaches week to week. Something that was brought up yesterday was the fact that each time someone prepares a lesson, they personally get so much out of it when they do and how much they enjoy that.

In the last 12 years that I have been preaching and teaching off and on, my views have changed and my understanding has matured, but one thing that has remained constant is my firm belief that reading the Bible is the air that people breathe, and without it constant in our lives we choke and suffocate. My mom recently produced a cassette tape from my first sermon ever, back when I was 19. My understanding of the Bible was simplistic, and my exegesis was weak, but I had a couple decent illustrations, and the one thing that rang through loud and clear was the importance of the Bible in our lives. And I still believe that today.

A book I read last year that continues to be one of the most influential books in my history is Wayne Cordeiro’s “The Divine Mentor.” Cordeiro encourages readers to seek all the mentors God has already provided within the Bible, and to daily dive into the deep wisdom found in every book of the Bible. I used this idea to change the way I taught a high school class at church for a couple years. Each week we’d study a different book of the Bible, and we started in Genesis and worked straight through, stopping in each one. We wouldn’t study the whole book, but something important within the book. And we found that there was always something important in each book, if we would but stop and look.

The idea of preaching to yourself is essentially what studying the Bible should be. You don’t read it to put a checkmark on a list of things you should be doing. You don’t do it to feel better about yourself. And doing it haphazardly (skipping around to your favorite verses) isn’t going to provide you a solid understanding either. You should do it because you realize that every word in the Bible has the potential to bring fresh air to your spiritual lungs, and it invigorates you and gives you insight into God and the world around you. Without the Bible in our lives (and without reading it thoroughly, taking time to actually think about the text and come up with something from it), we flounder for understanding and we are often frustrated by life. But when we do essentially preach to ourselves on a regular basis, the Word of God becomes a part of who we are and helps us through every situation in life.

So, here’s what you do. Just create a fake teaching schedule for yourself. Pretend you are going to teach a lesson every Sunday and then study a passage and prepare your message for Sunday during the week, and then save it. If you don’t have anyone to share it with, it’s at least valuable to you, but try to share it with folks - email it out, put it on a blog, share it in conversation. You’ll likely get even more out of it as you discuss it. If you don’t have an idea of how to get started, just do a lesson out of each book of the Bible each week like I did. Start in Genesis, work through to Revelation. In a year and 3 months time, you’ll have 66 lessons, one from each book of the Bible, and I guarantee your spiritual knowledge will be greatly increased. And you can keep repeating that process and getting a new lesson each time around.

Or just work through one book at a time. Either by yourself, or with a couple of friends, pick a book, say Daniel, and go through a chapter a week, or less if you want. But do the same thing, write down what you come up with.

And this is a very important piece no matter what you do - before you begin each time, say a simple prayer that the Holy Spirit would reveal to you what He wants you to know about the passage.

God’s Word is the air that Christians breathe. If we breathe it in regularly and deeply, it refreshes us and keeps us alive and vibrant. If we choose not to breathe it in regularly, our lungs will be bursting while we suffer and struggle without it. Preach to Yourself daily, weekly, regularly. There is very little of more benefit to you than spending thoughtful time with God, in your Bible.