Preaching, Teaching and Parables

My husband is an excellent preacher and he is also an excellent teacher. At church they tease him because he usually has three main points to his sermons with two – three sub points. He has a knack of making the harder things go down smoothly. I’ve learned so much from him through the years.

Jesus was excellent at preaching and teaching, but he also told many parables. Parables are just stories that illustrate the point you’re trying to make. My husband says that I’m storyteller. I do love to tell a good story and sometimes they make a point.

I’ve been very busy lately preparing for various teaching assignments. I’ve taught last weekend at the prison with my hubby and another couple. In two weeks I’ll be teaching again with couple of people. I’m not sure how I’ve gotten myself into all of this.

This Sunday, I’ll be preaching if you want to call it that for the first time. How did I get myself into this I wonder? Oh yeah…my wonderful hubby had this bright idea. I haven’t asked for this opportunity. I’ve not made any vows against doing it either. You know the type of vow I mean…"I will never, ever as long as I live preach on a Sunday.” The moment you say something that stupid you find yourself doing it. I didn’t do that. It wasn’t until last Sunday that I knew what I was going to speak on. Panic didn’t set in because I told my wonderful hubby that if I couldn’t come up with anything he was preaching.

Enter wonderful hubby offering to help me and that he did. I decided to speak on forgiveness. You can say he was my inspiration when he announced on Sunday morning that I was preaching next week. Now my "out" was out of the question. To his credit he was a great help in organizing everything. I appreciated his help so much. The rest is up to me. I thought that I would be nervous about this, but I’m not. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not dreading it either.

I find now that my kids are out of the house, my life is changing. My role is changing as their mom. It’s different parenting grown children. You pray for them, make yourself available if they seek advice, but ultimately the decisions they make are theirs. I love both my kids. Tom and I are very proud of them. I find now that I have more time to do ministry stuff that wasn’t there before when they were little.

There's a class this weekend, but I’m not teaching. I’ll be there helping out with the bookstore and working on my lessons for the next class in two weeks. I’ll let you all know if it goes well on Sunday or if they throw tomatoes at me.

Have a great weekend.

© Nadine Z. 2007