Storytelling and Preaching

I like to hear stories in sermons, and include them in my own sermons when I can. But, putting together the right stories with the right points is not always easy. Still, story-telling is one of the greatest ways to get a point across, and get it to stick.  Last week the whole sermon was based on the Old Testament story of Hosea and Gomer.

It’s sounds like a modern-day marital break-up you could see on any given Jerry Springer.  Hosea had such high expectations for a perfect marriage, but his bride wasn’t getting the attention she wanted.  She left him to for other men, and eventually found herself reduced to selling herself.

That’s where the story stops being so familiar, because that’s when Hosea actually buys back his unfaithful bride.  We just don’t see this kind of love today in people, certainly not on Springer.  That’s because it is God’s love that says, “You’ll never lose my love, and I’ll always take you back.”

David B. Smith wrote an article that gives great advice for adding storytelling to your sermons.  He writes…

• Read voraciously. Read as much and as widely as possible.  And then simply have a mind for sermons and a passion for communicating the gospel of Christ. Don’t just read Newsweek for the news; always be looking for that hook, that connecting opportunity, that divine aha!

• Find stories that are good for people.  An old manual, Preparing to Preach, comes from my great-grandfather C. R. Kite’s pastoral library. Author David R. Breed reminds us of the oft-repeated plea. “‘Please tell me a story,’ says the child. And the child is the father of the man.” Breed goes on to observe that no one listens to the “children’s story” at church more than the parents!

What Prayer Provides… R.A. Torrey’s “How to Pray”

In R.A. Torrey’s book How to Pray, he suggests at least four things prayer provides (#11, chapter one). I understand his points this way.  Prayer provides…

1. Growth for me
2. Power in what I do
3. Conversion for others
4. Blessings for the Church

I’ll just focus on two of those, growth for me, and conversion for others.

The first thing that prayer provides is Spiritual Growth.  Prayer promotes our spiritual growth as almost nothing else.  Prayer brings to light what is holding back my growth.   But, as I pray, God reveals my sin, even that which I may have never suspected without prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me (Ps.139:23,24). 

 Other ways Scripture tells us that prayer provides for Spiritual Growth are…

• In Ps. 51:2, it promises that in answer to prayer, God washes me from mine iniquity and cleanses me from my sin.
• In Ps. 119:18, it tells me that when pray for it, my eyes will be opened to discover wondrous things out of God’s Word.
• In James 1:5, it promises that from prayer, I will receive wisdom to know God’s way and strength to walk in it.

The next thing prayer accomplishes is the conversion of others.No one has ever been converted without interceeding prayer.  Someone may challenge that statement, because, you may say, there have been people saved who do not know of one intercessor.  But, perhaps you have forgotten that the Lord, Himself, interceeds for their conversions.     

In another section of Torrey’s book, he said,

Christ’s ministry did not close with His death. His atoning work was finished then, but when He rose and ascended to the right hand of the Father, He entered upon other work …to our complete salvation.

What that great present work is, by which He carries our salvation on to completeness, we read in Heb. 7:25, “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing HE EVER LIVETH TO MAKE INTERCESSION FOR THEM.”