Eswine: Post-Preaching Battles

A true-to-life and helpful post from Zack Eswine, pastor of Riverside Church (EPC) in St. Louis.

The after-sermon is often a spiritual battlefield. "How often on Lord’s-day evenings," Spurgeon observes, "do we feel as if life were completely washed out of us! After pouring out our souls over our congregations, we feel like empty earthen pitchers which a child might break." (Lectures, Zondervan, 156). For this reason, it is perhaps our most vulnerable moment in the preaching event. . . . Perhaps prayer is needed more when the sermon ends.

It is as if when we opened God’s Word and began to speak from it, we fired the first shot or tripped the alarm to alert our enemy that we are on the move. Fiery darts, hollowed-out emotions, misplaced identities, idols that do not want eviction, such things rise to fight the one who dares stand and speak for God.

Read the rest.

If you weren't aware, Zack has just begun a new blog for preachers--Preaching Barefoot.