{"id":2987,"date":"2018-01-30T00:48:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T06:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=2987"},"modified":"2018-01-27T17:38:16","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T23:38:16","slug":"not-sure-what-this-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=2987","title":{"rendered":"A COMMON OCCURRENCE IN PREACHING"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The following is not an uncommon occurrence for me while preparing to preach&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Not always, but there are certainly times of struggle either to make sense of the text and\/or to make sure I really believe it.\u00a0 As the Puritans liked to say, make sure to preach to yourself before you preach to others.\u00a0 Really believing the Word of God is more difficult than determining its proper meaning.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Then God brings light, many times much light, and I can&#8217;t write fast enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>It is one reason I don&#8217;t like to preach every week. \u00a0The process of preparation is best if I have months to mull and consider a text.\u00a0 I want to stew on it for a long time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I take many notes and ask many questions.\u00a0 Commentaries come at the end to make sure I am in the ballpark of sound exegesis.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>All this is one reason why I wish lead pastors preached less frequently.\u00a0 It would be better for them and for the congregation.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is not an uncommon occurrence for me while preparing to preach&#8230; Not always, but there are certainly times of struggle either to make sense of the text and\/or to make sure I really believe it.\u00a0 As the Puritans liked to say, make sure to preach to yourself before you preach to others.\u00a0 Really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,24,47,20,80,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-bible-reading","category-prayer","category-preaching","category-puritans","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2987"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2989,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2987\/revisions\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}