Reposted from a comment on a friend’s post:
In this season, there is a very not-quite-so-profound realization that we are, hopefully, coming to realize.
It is not just about integrity or skill in preaching taken alone.
And people are smarter and they yearn for more than than well-crafted, apologetically-driven, eexceptionally-studied spiritual mugging after the fashion of Ray Comfort or RZIM.
The accurate defense of the faith means nothing if people cannot discern the tenderness and affection of the Father of Lights strawed through our exposition. There has to really be a sense that we have been with Him more than we have been with the text.
It is not even about the tired maxim of “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.
The bottom line: in this season, people have to be able to smell the fragrance of Christ on our lives in order to know that we do, indeed, “have the goods”, and therefore, be finally given a reason to “pay for the goods”.
We have to have real skin in the game, not merely five hours of good study and at the top of our preachcraft expositionally.
You can preach till the cows come home verse-by-verse, but people will not invest their own skin in the game in the walk after and with Christ until they know your skin is first in the game.
Have we been with Him, or have we merely been with IT?
Are we merely pennywise because we have only been with the text, or are we exceptionally wise because we have marinated in The Only Wise (Jude 25)?
If, on one hand, people smell the fragrance of Him, they will at least have no excuse for not coming.
If, however, on the other hand, people do not smell the fragrance of Him, we will have no excuse, and they will be fully justified in ignoring us.
We must invest that time in having been with Him in order to be clothed with His fragrance. And before we will seek Him rightly as it comes to expanding the kingdom, we must have the right affection for them.
There is that intangible quality of tenderness toward the people not yet of G-d, in order for them to respond well.
Preachcraft alone forces us to rely on cunning speech and persuasion.
Fragrance on the other hand will yield the fields that are white from season to season.
Psalm 91 shows us part of this dynamic of how to avoid mere preachcraft.
#secretplacesofelelyon
#shadowofthealmighty
#preachcraftalonesucks
FRAGRANCE…
Was immediately taken back to a family activity in your yard where you, Pam, and the children were all so busy raking and burning those leaves. The pictures were graphic, the story unfolded with its twists and I was imagining the lovely autumn/fall smell of the bonfire and how you all were loaded with all that smokiness- hair, skin. clothes, lungs! You had the smoky fragrance . You were up-close-and-personal wuth the bonfire! But that fragrance does not touch me until I spend time actually with you, throwing armfuls of leaves into the fire! Sweat equity!
I can drool over the pictures, study pyrotechnics, wonder at the fractals in the leaves from here in Australia- but no fragrance-of-smoke on me!
As it is with the fragrance-of-Christ!
It is that being-with-him, soaking up that fragrance which is him, that makes the difference.
In the early days of this Mercy season I was arrested by that word ‘fragrance’. In this Mercy season group of women hungry to be ‘women-of-God, rather than rejected or commoditised, we began to have that revelation that it is being intimately with him that made us more as we were designed to be, in our relationships with husbands and children… infused , imbued with that fragrance! Lovers … and loved!
David, this is something that came from this, that ties in somewhat with what you are sharing so passionately here!
May the unfading beauty of a quiet gentle spirit
May the peace and security of a yielded heart
May grace and purity
Wisdom and unity
Be seen in my life as the fragrance of Christ
That I may be known as a Woman of God
Preach it from that fragrance, David!
#sweetfragrance
#sweetbo
Love this. Authenticity comes from purposeful embodying, not elegant prose or thoughtful dabbling.