Praying Through the Sermon: The Five Gates of Sermonic Prayer
To say that preachers ought to pray seems so obvious that it barely needs to be stated. I can’t think of any preacher I have known who didn’t pray in connection with the task. Likewise, trying to give preachers advice on how to pray for the sermon feels a little like trying to teach Grandma how to make cookies.
J. C. Ryle was right when he called prayer “the simplest act in all religion.” Prayer isn’t brain surgery. “It is simply speaking to God,” Ryle explains. “It needs neither learning, nor wisdom, nor book-knowledge to begin it.” If you want to pray, just tell God what you have to say. It is as simple as that.
Except that it isn’t. Or perhaps I should say, while it may indeed be that simple, the actual practice itself is not always easy, not even for those of us who are regarded as professionals in the discipline. If praying were easy, there wouldn’t be so many books on the subject. Neither would there be the plethora of methods, strategies, traditions, and even apps meant to harness our energies and get us talking.
An Extended Conversation
Even the most accomplished at praying can still be susceptible to the usual obstacles, such as busyness, distraction, and discouragement. Our most common frustrations seem to result from a combination of time and practice. We do not think that we pray enough. However, if we accept Ryle’s simple definition – that prayer is merely speaking to God – we are probably praying more than we think.
The church tends to organize its prayer life into set hours and stated times. However, for most, it is more of a running conversation that occurs in various contexts, the majority of which are informal. When it comes to the sermon, preachers usually focus on three temporal points: praying at the beginning of their study, at the start of the actual preaching, and then after it has been preached. These prayers are sometimes formal, occasionally even rote, but that does not necessarily make them mere formalities.
Yet, I think our prayers for the sermon are even more extensive than this. If we focus on the nature of our interaction rather than specific points in time, we may find that we are praying more than we realize and in ways that we are not even aware of. During our preparation and delivery of the ordinary sermon, we pass through at least five gates of prayer.
"We may find that we are praying more than we realize and in ways that we are not even aware of."
What separates one from another is tied to the complex nature of the preacher’s task, one that involves listening as much as speaking. We pray for ourselves, the sermon, and the congregation. Our praying extends across the entire span of the sermonic event, from preparation to proclamation and even beyond.
The Gate of Self-Understanding
The first gate we pass through is one of self-awareness. Prayer is a statement directed at God, but it is an act of attention first. Obviously, we must focus our attention on God when we pray. However, all good praying is an exercise in self-awareness as much as it is an effort to be attentive to God. We often find this perspective in the Psalms.
They are much more than grocery lists of personal requests. They include all the things we would expect of prayers: praise, petitions, and lament. But there are also statements of deep personal reflection, spiritual analysis, and self–talk. The Psalms reveal that prayer is often a conversation we have with ourselves as much as a conversation with God.
Sermon preparation begins not with a prayer for the right words but with a prayer for understanding. As preachers, we are interested in knowing what the text says and what the author meant by it. We tend to be primarily concerned with our own words. We want to know what we will say about it to our audience. Indeed, we often view this as the essence of sermon formulation. This one-sided perspective may cause us to lose sight not only of the congregation but also of ourselves.
Phillips Brooks famously defined preaching as the communication of truth through personality. He was not referring to the quirks or mannerisms that we usually associate with what we call personality, but to the expression of truth after it has been processed through personal experience. As Brooks explains, this is a message that is transmitted after “it has entered into our own experience, and we can give our own testimony of its spiritual power.”
Consequently, the most important prayer for the sermon may not be the one we utter when we step up to preach. Instead, it is when the preacher prays in the spirit of Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of the Lord. Like the patriarch, the preacher takes hold of the text and vows, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” However, also like Jacob, the preacher can expect to be wounded in the process. I do not believe that anyone is prepared to preach on a text until it has hobbled them in some way.
“I do not believe that anyone is prepared to preach on a text until it has hobbled them in some way.”
This prayer is not a single plea. It is an ongoing discussion with God during which we reflect on more than the exegetical details of the text and the historical background of the passage. This extended self-reflection is carried out with the help of the Holy Spirit. It expresses our honest response to the text as we struggle with its truth and wrestle with God over its implications. Jesus’ disciples often asked the Savior to explain himself. Sometimes, they even challenged his teaching (Matt. 15:12; 16:22).
The Gate of Compassion
As preachers, we are accustomed to seeing ourselves as God’s messengers. We speak on behalf of God. This is certainly true, but it is not the whole story. Like the priests of old, we also act as advocates of those who hear us. Therefore, we take our stand with them as we listen to the truth of the text. We attempt to view it through the eyes of our audience and ask the questions that they would ask of the passage and of themselves.
We are not merely studying the text to have something to say. We are studying from the perspective of our listeners so that we may listen to the text on their behalf. We are not listening as experts in the field but as fellow travelers who need to hear the truth of the text as much as the audience does. Consequently, the second gate through which we must pass is the gate of compassion.
“We are not listening as experts in the field but as fellow travelers who need to hear the truth of the text as much as the audience does.”
“Whether we have been praying, talking, teaching, preparing, or listening, we have been immersed in the lives of these people to whom we will speak, which is another way of saying that, symbolically at least, we rise to the pulpit from the pew.”
The Gate of Structure
Since the message is tailored for a specific audience in a particular life situation, we must also consider its shape. Sermon structure may seem like a purely mechanical matter. We don’t usually think of it as something we should pray about. In fact, sometimes we don’t think about it at all. After identifying the point of the text, we simply plug it into a generic template, and the sermon comes out.
It is no easy task to align the sermon's thoughts with the passage's truth and the audience's life situation. It is a process of experimentation where we consider multiple options, reject them, and plead with God to show us the one that fits. I have found that God’s answer does not come audibly or even easily. My experience is more of a fumbling exploration than a simple matter of responding to divine dictation. I would compare it to the trial and error that Paul seems to have engaged in during the journey that eventually led him to Macedonia (Acts 16:6–10). I try one path and find that it leads nowhere. I try another, only to abandon it.
Frankly, it often feels as if I am doing all the work. Yet, there always comes a point when I see a path in front of me that seems to fit both the text and the audience. It is the struggle that encourages me to think that God has helped me to find it.
The Gate of Power
Preachers pray for anointing when they begin to deliver the sermon. This is a prayer for empowerment. The term is biblical. In Scripture, anointing has ritual and theological significance. It is associated with the Holy Spirit’s ministry. However, the answer to the question of precisely what constitutes anointing seems somewhat vague.
Is it a concrete feeling or an imperceptible force? Is anointing a static quality that resides within the preacher and the sermon itself? Or is it something that is fluid, intermittent, and unpredictable? Some of the confusion we feel stems from theological convictions that place primary emphasis on either the human or the divine side of the experience.
Those who emphasize the human side tend to view the power of the sermon as a combined function of rhetorical factors inherent in the message as well as personal and spiritual qualities possessed by the messenger. Those who stress the divine are convinced that the power of the sermon depends entirely upon God.
Interestingly, when John speaks of anointing in connection with the ministry of the word, he attributes it to God but locates it within his audience, describing it as something that “remains in you.” John seems to describe the effect of anointing in cognitive rather than emotional terms when he says that “his anointing teaches you about all things” (1 John 2:27).
Divine power and human effort are not necessarily incompatible. The fact that preachers on both sides of the theological continuum pray for anointing demonstrates that we all recognize where the true source of power in the sermon resides. Where spiritual power is concerned, it is our privilege to ask but not to control.
"The fact that preachers on both sides of the theological continuum pray for anointing demonstrates that we all recognize where the true source of power in the sermon resides."
The Gate of Resignation
This fact brings us to the fifth gate of prayer in connection with the sermon. It is the gate of resignation. These are the conversations we have with God after the sermon has been preached. In practice, it often begins at the close of the sermon. However, it probably should not end there. I often brood about the message after it is over, comparing the experience with my expectations. The contrast is not always a happy one. Even when I am pleased with the result, I cannot always be sure that it means I have preached a “good” sermon.
There is too much about what happens next that lies outside my control. The real work that God is doing through the sermon is not confined to the few minutes I spent preaching it. So, my prayer about the sermon after it has been preached is more than an after-action report asking God to help me do better next time. It is a prayer asking God to continue the conversation with my audience in ways that I cannot see or hear. It is also a dialogue about what needs to be said next and why.
When we pass through the gate of resignation, we relinquish the illusion that we are in control and abandon ourselves to what Martyn Lloyd Jones has described as the “romance” of preaching. “We do not control the situation; this is of God,” Lloyd Jones observed in Preaching and Preachers. “This is where the romance comes in; you have no idea what you are doing.” Prayer plays a significant role in this romance. We all know how to pray. But we do not necessarily know what we are doing.
Previous to retirement, John taught at Moody Bible Institute for 25 years.
He coauthored with Ron Klassen the book, No Little Places.