Home and dry

Home now from the preaching trip to sunny, very sunny today, Redditch. Preach seemed to go well, with plenty of positive feedback and encouragement. If you're interested, text of sermon is on my sermon blog, here.

I still find preaching to be a really odd experience. I usually love preparing for it, and this time was no exception. In College Fellowship group prayers on Wednesday morning I asked the group to pray for me as I prepared. In the 25 minutes following that meeting I sat there in my private prayer time and all the key ideas for the sermon came to me. It was then just a case of writing them down, polishing them a bit and developing a few of them into a fully worked sermon. It was as close as I ever experience of God giving me stuff to say.

I felt energised as I spoke, and the feedback from the people there, as I was speaking was friendly and welcoming. But since, I've been absolutely bushed. It still seems to take an inordinate length of time to get my energy back having preached. I find this a bit of a paradox. Preaching is something I enjoy, I appear to be good at, I feel energised whilst I'm speaking, but then wiped out when I've finished. To be reflected on further...