Leadership Journal

For years I have worried weekly about how to effectively shape messages from God's Word. You know how it goes: begin with an attention-arresting anecdote, follow with scholarly exegesis peppered with witty, well-timed illustrations, and close with a heart-wrenching final story to lead toward application and call for response.

But I've been gradually growing in my awareness that it's a whole lot more effective, for everyone, when the Word shapes the messenger first.

My transformation in this area has been gradual, but the realization came suddenly. It happened over dinner with our middle child, a college sophomore.

About a month into his fall semester, I drove to his college and took him to dinner at an Italian restaurant off campus. He explained that anything tastes better when it's prepared somewhere other than the cafeteria. As we talked he told me that he'd been assigned to give a five-minute devotional thought at choir the next day.

"Got any ideas?" he asked.

I didn't, but to stall for time, I replied, "What are you thinking about these days?"

He replied somewhat sheepishly, "Well, I don't know if this is devotional worthy or not, but I've been reading quite a bit in the New Testament lately …" (Tell me if that's not one of the most inspiring things a dad can hear) "… and I noticed—you're going to think this is a little silly—"

"No, no. I promise."

"Well, you know how you look ahead a few pages to see how far you have to go to finish the chapter?" (Yes, I do.)

"When I look ahead and see a bunch of red letters on the next couple of pages, my heart starts to beat a little faster."

(I'm with you buddy. My heart's beating faster right now!)

"So I guess what I've been thinking about is that there's something pretty cool about reading the red letters. I mean, when I'm reading the red letters, I'm actually reading the actual words that God spoke. Isn't that a trip?"

I don't know if he noticed that it wasn't the red pepper in my tortellini that had just caused my eyes to water. I nodded again.

He continued, "I guess I grew up hearing the Bible all the time from you and Mom so I didn't think that much about it, but now that I'm reading it more—for myself—I'm starting to understand that it's a pretty powerful thing to be able to read the actual words of Jesus. I mean, that's God talking, man!"

Yes. That's God talking.

And in a way, through my son, that was God talking to me. Over the years, as I had been trying to carefully craft messages, God had been trying to mold me.

My son added, "It seems like when you get the red letters up there in your brain where they can operate, they seem to just show up when you really need them."

"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean," I said.

My mind wandered a bit back to when my wife and I had sat across the table from a hard working, high tithing couple in our congregation who, with folded arms and wrinkled foreheads, made it clear that if we continued to let a certain young lady (you know, the sinful type) come to church, they would have to leave.

PAGE 1 of 3