If you’re going maximize your potential to minister to people, your connection to Christ needs to stay very current.
I make it my aim as a minister to break fresh bread for the people of God each week. This doesn’t require that I wait until the last minute to cook it up. It means that I keep it in the oven through prayer, meditation, and living it out as long as possible.
Holly has a certain restaurant she chooses for our date nights just because the bread always comes out hot and fresh…she doesn’t even necessarily care for their entrées. Whether it’s an Italian restaurant or a First Baptist Church, when there’s fresh bread in the house, you can’t keep people away.
Freshness doesn’t necessarily increase the nutritional value of bread. So it is possible to preach cold or reheated sermons and see lives changed. A man I really respect once said: “God will use the Gospel to lead men to Christ if the devil himself preaches it.” Paul’s statement in Philippians 1:18 seems to substantiate this theory.
But freshness does increase the chances that the bread will be consumed in larger quantities. And that’s what I’m after. To feed as much Word to as many hungry people as humanly possible.
Minister from the overflow. Do what you have to do to keep your personal relationship with Jesus piping hot.
Fresh bread tastes better.
