How to prepare for presenting God's word
I am preparing for this Wednesday's 4 pm presentation of Blitz Thru the Bible at Atlanta Tech Village. Here are the key elements of my preparation process. (There are still a few seats available. Click here to register.)
Preparing for a presentation of God's word is different than preparing for any other presentation. When presenting God's word, I am speaking for God. When presenting my ideas, I am speaking for myself. In short, I am talking about His ideas versus my ideas.
In every presentation, there are best practices. Here are mine.
Start with meditation and visioning
There must be a central theme or subject
There must be a problem to be solved or an idea to be explored
There must be a stepped solution or itemized concepts presented
There must be a proof of truth via storytelling...real life examples
There must be a clear takeaway for the listener
Practice, practice, practice
But presenting God's word has one step that requires inclusion. And that step is prayer.
This step has its best practices, too. These include:
Seek time with God. Commune with Him.
Listen to Him
Submit my will to His will
Recognize the power of the Holy Spirit
Receive confidence that God appointed me for such a time as this
Seeking time with God, commune with Him
A quick "God, help me" prayer is not going to do it. This kind of prayer indicates I know what I need to present and I want God to bless it. What I need to remember is these are God's words about to be presented, not mine.
To understand what God wants to be presented to this audience He gathered, I must spend time with God. I must seek to set aside time to meet with God, to be with Him. To invite Him to be with me, know He is always there, but rarely invited in.
Jesus said, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."
God is right there at my door, right there. All I have to do is invite Him in. He will enter my space and commune with me. He wants to be with me, but I must open the door and invite Him in.
Listen to Him
God has given me the opportunity to represent Him. I must recognize this honor and the gravity of this responsibility. When I think about this assignment, I am overwhelmed. Me represent God? Really?
"Yes," He answers, "really."
So what am I to do once in am in the presence of God?
Jesus said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
This is His promise. He will always answer my questions. He will always address my concerns. He will always make clear what is hazy and confusing. He promises.
Submit my will to His will
I know God is speaking to me when ideas, phrases, or sometimes whole sentences come to me. When this happens, my first reaction is excitement. It is the breakthrough I was hoping for by meeting with God. There is a richness and uniqueness to the ideas God is communicating to me. There is also a conviction of truth and completeness.
But sometimes I hear an idea that I am not comfortable with. An idea that puts me and my reputation at risk. This is God saying, "Well, you asked."
This happened when I was invited to tell my story at the 2016 High Tech Prayer Breakfast. I heard clearly from God that when I finished my story, I was to invite the people in the audience to do what I did. And that was to give their lives to Christ. But that wasn't all. He told me I was to ask them to stand up if they made this decision.
I was not comfortable with this in the least. I had to make a decision, "My will or your will?" He won.
Recognize the power of the Holy Spirit
When Jesus was leaving earth, He said, "But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you."
The Advocate Jesus was speaking about here is the Holy Spirit of God, the third person in the Trinity. When I gave my life to Christ, He gave me the Holy Spirit. This means I have the very power of God in me.
But it is one thing to have the power. It is quite another to use the power.
It is like God gave me an axe to cut down a tree. It is up to me to pick it up, trust it, and use it to fell the tree. This is true of the Holy Spirit. God gave me the Holy Spirit to give me the right words. But to have the right words at the right time, I must be relying on the Holy Spirit. He has the power.
Receive confidence that God appointed me for such a time as this
I experienced this in some of the talks I was asked to give. When I have this confidence, I have, what we call in this world, flow. We hear in sports quite often that the athlete is in the flow. But flow can be experienced in everything I do. Including giving a talk on God's word.
The way I prepare for this experience is to receive confidence from God. His confidence then becomes my confidence. The talk is no longer up to me. It is up to Him.
I also come to believe that whenever God calls me to represent Him, He will make me successful. God never called me to anything in my life that I failed at. I always succeed when I do God's will for my life and rely on God to achieve it. Always.
As you can see, this preparation step is different than simply doing the first step of any other presentation. It is far more than meditation and visioning. When I'm asked to speak on God's word, I eventually end up here.
I say eventually because my reflex in preparing a presentation is to do it myself. Like I am presenting my ideas and simply representing me. And then it hits me and I ask, "Why did you choose me to do this?" And this starts the conversation.