Chasing Lions… That was my first sermon I ever preached to the congregation at Covington Christian Church.
Now I know what you are thinking- “who let this guy preach?” That’s the funny thing about God, He has no qualifications.
Like everything up to this point in my faith walk, I got pushed into this whole thing and did not ask for it! Now, would I want to be on stage talking to people? Well, to be totally honest, I would not hate it. But this all started when my mentor made a random comment (like always) that ended up impacting me a lot more than I thought it would: “You should write a sermon.”
I responded with a laugh and a sarcastic “Sure”. The next week he announced to the whole church that he was moving to Kansas to plant a church. So through this transition period of the church we would be having fill in preachers, my mentor in his wily ways goes to the whole church leadership and says, “Leave a Sunday open for Luke to preach.” He then continued to express the fact that I have his full confidence for this.
Wow. Take a step back. I have never preached before in my life, nor have I spoke to a crowd larger than 30 people….maybe. Why have so much confidence in me? I can’t speak for my mentor and his motives, but I have a feeling he was getting such confidence from somewhere else…
So here I am, 22, with not that much knowledge of scripture, and I have 2 months to prep a sermon for a church of 70ish people? (I have no idea, that was a random guess.)
So where to start? Pick a topic. Now I am not about to take you through my whole writing process, but I will tell you this: writing a sermon was like nothing I had ever done before. I started with one idea and a piece of scripture, then another and another and another. Each piece of scripture shifted the focus of my topic and point, building onto it.
I studied that stuff hard, I mean like I have ever studied before. If you want to be well versed in something, study it like you are going to have to speak on it. What a way to experience God and His word in a new way!
If I thought that writing the sermon was a cool way to experience God, giving it? WOW! Never have I felt the Holy Spirit in such a way, never have I felt like God was picking my words for me!
My sermon was on radical behavior from radical believers, in scripture and in modern times. I asked the congregation a question before I even got into my message: What are you willing to risk/give up to follow Jesus? Then I moved on to a bit of scripture that is a footnote to most who read though 2 Samuel.
2 Samuel 23:20- “And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds. He struck down two ariels of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen.”
Now of course the focus is on the lion and how Benaiah killed it. But I painted this picture for them. What if instead of the lion chasing Benaiah, Benaiah chased the lion? Into this pit and killed this 500lbs animal? I related this to how God loves to stack the odds against us and then knock them down in the 11 hour. So true right? But I think my favorite part of the whole experience is when I said something that surprised me just as much as it did everyone else. I talked about my trip with The World Race and others that are doing radical things in the church and what it means to chase a lion. What’s that thing that Jesus is putting in front of you that you are afraid to do? With the Holy Spirit filling me and tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, I said this: “I am chasing my lion, it’s time to chase yours.”
I got a lot of positive responses from the people of my church. I loved it, God used me that day, and it was awesome. I did not write this blog to inspire you, I did not write it to tell you about how awesome it was. I wrote this to tell you what thing: You need to preach.
“But I am not a preacher!” Neither am I!
Whatever reason you have to not do it, stop. Have you ever noticed all throughout the bible, every time something really cool and godly happened they were preaching God’s word? Preaching is not one of those things that just pastors do, we should all preach. What is that thing you are good at? Find a way to teach on that with scripture and talk about it has brought you closer to God!
I loved it, I highly recommend it, chase your lion.
Lion Chaser,
Luke C Thompson
