Out Of Place

Dr. Steve Lawson is in town for four days as guest speaker in a conference held by a local church at the UP Film Institute. The attendees were mostly pastors and leaders from different churches all over the metro, with some coming from far up north and down south. It was an exhaustive talk about expository preaching, with the good doctor drawing from years of experience, and listing down very good points on how to preach better and with more precision. I have restricted my insights regarding the conference to my journal for now, unless I find it necessary to publicize my commentary. Needless to say it lacked the one essential thing I was waiting to hear. The importance of prayer.

Come noon time for the meal break, when everyone was getting acquainted with everybody else and most of the people were going out to get their meals, food was the last thing on my mind. Instead I wanted to go somewhere quiet to properly meditate over everything I have heard from the morning part's chapter.

University of the Philippines is a huge campus with a village inside it. I have been here quite a few times in the past and I knew it would be an hour and a half before the conference resumes so instead of minding myself I went out to see if there would be people I can hand out tracts to. As it turns out, there were lots of construction workers scattered through out the campus taking a breather under the shade, and since they have nothing else to do before going back to work, the tracts proved to be a worthwhile read. Half way around my route I found this very quite spot. How often do yourself in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the metro? Perfect.

Spent a good thirty minutes here reading my devotions before walking back to the venue and scattering more seeds to students and still more construction workers along the way. I was delighted to part with my last tract with the security guard of the conference itself just at the very entrance. I stayed and talked with him, waiting for the call to go back in. All these pastors, and not one concerned of this soul in need of Christ right in front of them. I know I am no better. But I am privileged today.

Master Bounds correctly states, "Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of divine unction because the man is full of divine unction. The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher."

The grave need of the church today is not preachers, but anointed preachers. Preachers who know God. Men mighty in prayer. How many preachers have we had and how many sermons have been preached in the last two decades, and we're still as dark as any heathen nation, if not worse? The darkness that prevails over a nation can only be attributed to its pulpits losing the light of unction and anointing, thus becoming irrelevant and passing.