I heard Joel Osteen once say that his goal in preaching was to make people leave feeling more better about themselves than when they came in. This makes preaching all about us. I think a better goal would be to get people to leave loving Jesus more than when they came in. The focus should be on Jesus not making us feel good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost all evangelical preachers will give a gospel presentation at the end of their sermon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are preaching the Gospel if the rest of the sermon is inconsistent with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We all want to talk about grace, but grace won’t mean much to you unless you know that you are a sinner. So how do we preach about grace in a culture that tells us we deserve everything? Ads tell us we deserve more, we deserve more money, we deserve a new car, we deserve to feel good about ourselves, but apart from Christ the bible says that the only thing we really deserve is death. The gospel is “good news” when we recognize that we are sinners. That is what makes grace so meaningful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The culture around us will always scream that we are the center of the universe, that we deserve the glory, the comfort, and the crown. But the real Gospel doesn’t flatter us; it breaks us so that it can heal us. It tells us the hard truth that we deserve nothing but death, so that we can finally see the breathtaking wonder of what we\u2019ve actually been given: a cross we didn’t have to carry, a debt we couldn’t pay, and a grace we could never earn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s stop preaching a message that makes people leave the sanctuary loving themselves. Let\u2019s preach a Christ so magnified, so holy, and so beautiful, that when the doors open, they leave entirely forgotten in the shadow of His grace\u2014loving Jesus more than their own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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