offensive preaching

Sometimes preaching with conviction hurts.

Not every sermon is going to be a feel good made for tv moment.

Sometimes people will be offended. Sometimes you will receive the cold shoulder.

This isn't new. Jesus taught on difficult things and sometimes the people left. Sometimes the crowds thinned.

This might have been the first time that this happened to me on any level today. There was very little affirmation and to be quite honest, I loved it.

Now preachers can take this one of two ways. They can think that what they've preached was ineffective and so people don't have anything positive to say, or they can think that conviction is taking place. And if the prayer and preparation have been put into the message and you know that God has stirred the message in you, then the latter option may indeed be true.

The preacher must comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It's what Jesus did.

Yet the preacher only aims the gun, the Holy Spirit pulls the trigger.

Sometimes when we're honoring the text...we will have to be offensive...because sometimes that's precisely what the scripture demands.