This morning, I feel a great void in my prep time for worship. For the last two years, I've been blessed to pray at this time every Sunday morning with Jimmy Mitchell and Rick Northen. Jimmy is the Youth and Family Minister at the Village; Rick serves (at least until early October when he and Gail leave for full-time ministry in Cambodia) as one of the Shepherds.

I'm sure this morning they are praying together back in the Village. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time until God blesses my life and ministry with a person of devotion and prayer with whom I can share some time on Sunday mornings. It's just, I'm missing the familiar, passionate pleas of two godly men this morning.

---------------

I remember before I began my ministry thinking that preaching had everything to do with study. Research. Plowing through commentaries, lexicons, Bible dictionaries, etc.

What I've come to realize in the last ten years is that preaching has more to do with prayer than preparation. You see, I can prepare the finest outline known to man, have it polished technically and present it flawlessly; yet, if God is absent from my preparation, I've failed God and those who come to hear God's message.

It is in prayer that God shapes and molds the heart of the messenger to speak the word of God to men. It is through prayer that God prepares, not the technical aspect of the sermon, but the spiritual receptivity of those who hear to receive God's message.