How can pastors or fathers communicate Scriptural truths more effectively to their congregations or families?

In this video, Hensworth Jonas explains that it is vitally important that pastors are being fed by the Word. It can be easy to focus on bringing the Word only to their congregation but neglect considering how they themselves might be impacted by Scripture. 

Hansworth suggests that preachers need to stay with the text until there is a fire inside of him and a burden to share a message from Scripture with the congregation. You aren't ready to preach if the text hasn't impacted you. When it has, there is an authenticity to your preaching and a passion. It builds credibility.

 Scott shares that for him, it is helpful to consider whether he is bringing a sermon or a message to his congregation. It is straightforward to craft and communicate a sermon. It is something else to preach a message that is burning in your soul.

 Preachers need time to search for deep insights within the text and take time to really immerse himself in Scripture. It isn’t something that should be taken lightly.

 

The same idea can also apply to fathers within the home. If fathers are not taking the time to read the Word and spend time in prayer themselves, they will not be equipped to invest and nurture their own children. Are you being intentional about reading and meditating on Scripture?

 Exodus 4:10-12 (NKJV) - "Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” So the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.”

You do some very funny things in your preaching. You know, you'll say something, you'll say, oh, I don't think you heard me. And you'll go back. You loop back to get them to reconsider what you already said. Tell us about that.

How do you work that out in your mind? It must be a relational thing. If a preacher simply is going to have no relationship with God himself, and he's being a professional, which we are not, okay, He will go to the text and stay with the text until you have a burden. Until that text impacts you. So people say, well, how do I meet the needs of my people?

Well, what do you need, preacher? You are them. Only You are in a position where you have to eat what you feed them. So why don't you feed yourself some good material? Just like any parent, you're going to eat what you feed your kids.

You can't have a good diet for yourself and not for them, or vice versa. So the preacher, I believe, needs to ask himself, what do I need? And he goes to that text first and foremost to feed his soul. When we think of muzzling the ox, or not muzzling the ox, we're not really thinking about the pastor's remuneration. I like to think that he needs to feed first.

He needs to eat first, you know. You know, Solomon said, the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness. You know that, this is the opposite. Yes, so again, the preacher needs to get, stay with the text until there is a fire inside of you, until there is a burden to deliver. You're not ready to stand before your people if this text hasn't impacted you.

And when it has, there is a ring of authenticity and credibility that will make them sit up and listen to you. There is a passion in you that makes them say, that God believes what he's saying. He has credibility. He's not just a professional, well, it's time to preach, let me deliver something. No, no, no, no, no, no.

This is someone who has been with Christ and is ready to deliver that passion, that burden, that the Lord has put in his heart. You know, here's how that kind of works for me. It's Saturday night, and I've been working on my sermon all week long, and we're getting ready to go to bed, and my wife asks, how are you doing? What she means is, how are you doing with your sermon? And when she asks that question, I either know that I have a sermon or I have a message, and there's a big difference.

It's easy to have a sermon. It's easy to have a 20 page manuscript and points that follow the contours of the text that try to bring out what's in the text. But that's very different from having a message burning in your soul. And, you know, sometimes that doesn't happen until the next morning, sometime. Sometimes it happens right away early in the week, but often it takes me time to have a message that goes beyond a sermon.

The preacher needs time. He needs time to flush and cleanse himself. It takes time for me. In prayer and in meditation on that text and in searching for the deep insights in the text. Once he has done that and written, then he's not even dependent on those notes.

I use a manuscript, but I'm not locked into a manuscript. This is why. You're just bouncing off of it. I'm bouncing off of it because, well this is what you were talking about earlier, because I am reading my audience. I'm looking around.

Am I reaching them? Are heads nodding? Are people... Do they get it? So sometimes I may come back with several illustrations until they get it, depending on what's happening with them.

And it really doesn't matter what culture you're dealing with because by the grace of God I've been given opportunities to preach in a wide variety of contexts, on different continents, and different nationalities, and even in America, in different cultural expressions in America, in the African-American churches, in your church, and many other churches of different denominations. And it's important to me to adjust to the culture of the people. So I have no expectation that everybody will respond like my congregation in Antigua and Barbuda. All right, so I watch and I listen to what's going on with the congregation and adjust to myself accordingly. And if I need more illustration, if I need more celebration, if I adjust accordingly.