“If you can’t preach on grace, you can’t preach on anything. And if you can preach really well on grace, you can preach on anything.”

[quote_right]”If you’re missing grace, you’re not preaching, you’re just talking in a suit.”[/quote_right]If you can’t preach on grace, then frankly, you don’t get it. You don’t understand that most basic of human interactions with the Most Holy One. You likely have all kinds of extra trappings to your preaching that have added or taken away from the gospel. You also have trouble connecting with people in your preaching–you may have a few good things to say–but nobody is changed by them. If you can’t preach on grace then you’re missing the fundamental ingredient to preaching–which itself is an agent of grace. If you’re missing grace, you’re not preaching, you’re just talking in a suit.

If you preach really well on grace–if you preach with a focus on the Bible and a fire in the belly–then you can preach on pretty much anything. If you get the main thing, and keep that main thing the main thing, then the rest of theology and scripture and human experience all maks so much more sense. If you preach a sermon on grace and it seems like you have reawakened the old Christian to their fundamental relationship to God, then you’ve helped people rediscover the dream, and refocus on the true hope–and helped them change from slowly sinking slough of despond that is religiosity. If you preach a sermon on grace and it seems like you have drawn the distant sinner to finally have hope that Christ not only loves them but would like to spend time with them–and you helped them change from a rebel soul to an embracing, submitting, confessing, hoping, and eagerly seeking child, well, then you’ve done it. You’ve found grace, and all your other sermons can find their path now.

So, if you’ve never preached, I mean really preached, on grace I have to ask what’s holding you back? And if you’re preaching it wrong, then stop it. And if you’re preaching it–but not really, really well, then start. Grace is what our God is all about.

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NOTE: I recently heard a message on grace from a young staff member at College Church named Daniel Rife. He preached really well on grace, and I suspect he can preach on anything else now. You can be on the lookout here for Daniel’s message as it’s likely to be posted soon.

 

UPDATE: Here is Daniel Rife’s Sermon embedded as video below: