Frustrating does even begin to describe my feeling this evening.  Coughing your way through your morning message was never listed as a good way to get the attention of people in school.  The good news is things are getting better as I cough stuff loose.  The bad news is in the still trying to get it all gone.  No one feels worse than me when things go wrong in a service.  Maybe this is because the problem starts and ends with me.  Just take a moment to see it from my point of view.  You gather material all week for a message.  Time is spent investing in thought or prayer on how best to approach the sermon.  Writing out the research takes a large piece of your time.  You do all you can to be biblical yet relevant only to have your work disrupted by a persistent cough.  It is never ever my goal to have good material bomb for whatever reason.  Here is why frustration is only one word to get a handle on my emotions.

It is very possible that my own expectations contribute to any downfall.  Dealing with scripture is a serious thing for me.  God speaks in times long ago with application for our current reality.  Even when you wonder how much is left to say you discover God always has new depths to uncover.  Maybe these failures do not match up to others in comparison.  Perhaps there are times you need to remember that God is the one who actually matches the words to the meaning.  The very best of messages still require the blessing of God who initiates the whole process.  Years of prepping and delivering sermons have not robbed me of the joy of pulling it all together.  But neither have the years offered some sense of protection from struggling when it falls short. 

I know that most preachers tend to hide behind whatever anxiety or insecurity that remains in their being.  More than a few offset a lack of substance by relying on sheer volume of voice.  Ours is a day of serious issues in our world.  The real problems of human beings cannot be solved with noisy platitudes served up in a biblical disguise.  Doing such things may make a person popular with a crowd but it cannot touch the nerve of humanity.  Jesus will do His teaching with a blend of stories and spiritual truth.  You most often witness Him teaching while seated in a boat or on a hillside.  Even the longest of His recorded teachings will take only a few minutes to read.  Yet what He says will transform not just the culture of the time but throughout the ages.  Surely that is worth consideration as we think through our approach to public speaking?

Tomorrow starts a new week.  It is time for more reading and reflecting as we move toward next Sunday.  We will do this in hope that our next effort will be without the physical ailments trying to get me down.  This is honestly all that I know to do in moving past this.  One can only hope it will be enough.

Bro. Trey