I know you pray as you compose sermons. You probably include some kind of prayer for illumination before Scripture is read and exposited in your services. But what if there were a way to sharpen and hone these prayers? What if a consecrated master of language left us words to help us pray before we preach?
The seventeenth-century poet and pastor George Herbert concluded his book The Country Parson with “The Author’s Prayer Before Sermon.” When I make this prayer my own, passion to preach leaps in me; the joy of the story of our redemption unites with the gravity of the task of proclamation. I hope to stoke the flame of your preaching by highlighting seven movements in Herbert’s prayer.
1. Acclaim the Creator.
Before we prepare or actually preach, we look up from ourselves to the one who made us. Herbert opens with adoration:
