How To Dress A Sermon Series

HOW TO DRESS A SERMON

Preaching involves all the components of dressing appropriately for the occasion. You would not go swimming in a three-piece suit and tie any more than you would enter the pulpit in only your underwear! How your dress your sermon will determine your ability to communicate its truth.

Appropriate Underwear

Underwear is best unseen, but vitally important! Parts of the body are not protected properly without appropriate underwear. Underwear is put on before outer wear. It is the foundation of a well-dressed individual and no one is properly dressed without well-fitting underwear!

What is the underwear of a sermon? PREPARATION! How the preacher prepares the sermon is as important as well-fitting undergarments. Your preparation will make you confident and comfortable, or unsure and underdressed! Preparation is the unseen part of preaching.

Prepare Your Heart

The well-dressed sermon is best presented by the preacher well-prepared! Making sure that your own heart is right before God is vital if you want to adequately communicate the Truth of God. Keep on “sanctifying” yourself to God, setting yourself apart to Him and for His Work. Without continuing sanctification, you will be dressed in underwear full of holes, stretched out with broken elastic. Trying to speak for God when your heart is not right is like a hand puppet empty of a hand! The puppet finds its life through the hand of a puppeteer. Even so, the preacher comes alive by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit living through a life in right relationship with God! Be like the prophet Ezra! “Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.”

(Ezra 7:10 NIV).

Make sure your heart is right with God so that your sermon is empowered by God Almighty!

Prepare Your Spirit

Before Jesus preached His first sermon (and life-defining sermon), He spent time alone with God in the wilderness. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, ...Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.”

(Luke 4:1,14 NIV ) You must prepare your spirit through prayer if you want your sermon presentation to have impact. Yes, Jesus was tempted by the devil while there, and you will be too. You will be tempted to think you are too busy in ministry to pray over each sermon. Without prayer, even the best, most well-crafted sermon will fall flat and powerless before your spit reaches the first row of seats!

Praying over your message will clarify your purpose. Why do you want to preach this sermon? Why do you believe God wants you to preach this sermon to this congregation at this time? Can you say with confidence that God has inspired this sermon for these people to be preached at this time by this preacher?

Be careful not to preach a message just because you were moved when you heard another preacher preach it! Don’t preach a sermon hoping it will straighten out so individual! You probably won’t do anything but get that person bent out of shape! Before you preach a message, get you spirit right!

A preacher is touched by a sermon three times: before preaching while in the closet of preparation, when preaching while in the pulpit of presentation, and after preaching while practicing what is preached!

Prepare Your Mind

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

(2 Timothy 2:15 KJV)

Preparing your mind for the presentation of the Word of God to the People of God will be a life-long procedure. Like putting on your underwear everyday, preparing your mind must be done every time you preach. Even if you’ve preached this “sugar stick” of a sermon a hundred times and you know it by heart, it will sound hollow and feel naked without fresh study! You may not have to study as long or hard the more you have preached it, but always study the Scriptures and other comments so God can give you fresh oil to light a fire in the current congregation. Leftovers are only good for a short time and not repeatedly. Prepare your mind so that you can rightly divide the Word of Truth!

Preparing your mind includes proper training by formal education, ongoing learning, and honest mentors, as well as continual study in preparation to preach tomorrow. But don’t wait until you have to preach tomorrow to get prepared! Trying to prepare your mind while taking a nap is like dreaming you are preaching and waking up to discover yourself in the pulpit! Spend time in studying the HOW and WHAT of preaching.