Audio Transcript
Pastor John was recently in prison — to preach. Not for the first time, hopefully not for the last, either. You may recall that, in 2009, Pastor John preached inside Angola Prison in Louisiana — a notorious maximum-security facility, a place where most inmates will live out the rest of their lives. In such a sobering context, Pastor John, of all the things you could have preached, you were moved to urge those eight hundred inmates to understand from John 6 that our Savior did not come into the world to be useful, by fulfilling worldly desires, but to be precious — to be our all-satisfying “bread of life.” You walked us through that decision to urge these men to treasure Christ above all else, declaring that Angola was not their final chapter — eternity was. A powerful message and a powerful trip that we’ve talked through on the podcast in the past.
That trip is on my mind today because of a question we’ve gotten throughout the whole lifespan of this podcast: How do you decide what to preach in a context like this one? You have to preach one sermon in a prison with no redo, no do-overs — you get one shot. I ask because you just recently preached again in a local prison.
Now, obviously, expositional preaching through books of the Bible is your norm, and that norm comes with a script — literally. You move passage by passage, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but always along a clear path forward. But not all ministry fits this predictable flow. Funerals shift the demands with every situation, depending on the spiritual condition of the deceased, the spiritual health of their grieving family, and how well you know the people in the room. Or maybe you’re asked to pray at a sports event or to preach inside of a prison to a room full of unfamiliar faces, a one-time opportunity. When these opportunities arise that break from the script — when there’s no sermon-series script to follow — how do you discern God’s will and his leading in deciding what to preach?
In order for my response to that question to make sense, I think our listeners need to know what I mean by “the will of God.” So, assuming my goal is to preach a message that is God’s will for these prisoners — say, that I went and preached to a while back — what do I mean by “the will of God”? I want to preach a sermon that accords with his will. What do I mean by that?
Sovereign Will and Moral Will
Well, the first thing that I mean by “the will of God” (there are at least three uses that I have in mind) is the sovereign will of God, which refers to whatever comes to pass. “My counsel shall stand,” Isaiah 46:10 says, “and I will accomplish all my purpose.” God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). So, that’s the first meaning: sovereign will. Everything that comes to pass is ultimately God’s sovereign will.
Second: God’s moral will, which is sometimes called his revealed will. This refers to the commandments of Scripture: the Ten Commandments and places like the Sermon on the Mount or Romans 12:9–10, where Paul says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection” — and on and on the revealed will of God goes. So, that’s the second meaning of the will of God. What is revealed in Scripture that we ought to do is God’s will.
“What approach would be most effective for salvation? What would be most effective for strengthening faith?”
Now, in a sense, you could say (and many do say), “That’s the totality of God’s will in Scripture. There isn’t a secret will of God, like which person to marry, which school to go to, where to park your bike, what shirt to wear.” A lot of people have been driven crazy by thinking of the will of God this way, and some people have tried to rescue people from that craziness by saying, “You are free to wear whatever shirt you want, park your bike wherever you want. You can’t sin against something where there’s no commandment, and God didn’t put in his book what shirt to wear — so, relax. Don’t be crazy.”
Applying the Mind of Christ
Now, personally, I don’t want people to be crazy. But I don’t think things are that simple. So, I tend to think in terms of a third way to talk about the will of God — namely, a spiritually discerned application of the mind of Christ to a particular situation. It’s not just rational; it’s more than rational. It’s not irrational — it’s just more than rational.
I’m thinking of texts like Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind [It takes a renewed mind!], that by testing you may discern [spiritually discern] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Or Colossians 1:9: “We . . . pray for you . . . that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Now, I don’t think those texts mean, “Be sure to find the right commandment in the Bible and obey it.” It may really matter for spiritual reasons what shirt you wear today (not usually, but it might), and it may matter, all things considered, where you park your bike today. There are a thousand things that might go into that decision that would make one decision better than another.
Humble Wisdom
And it mattered to me last spring what text I chose to preach at the prison in Lino Lakes and how I went about it, even though there’s no command in the Bible to tell me what text to choose or what illustrations to use or what to emphasize or what tone to have. None of that was in the Bible.
I know that one way of describing what I needed at that moment was wisdom. I remember Garry Friesen’s book on the will of God, and his whole emphasis was that we don’t need a third way of talking about the will of God. We just need wisdom to apply what we have in the Bible — wisdom to take the knowledge of God and the knowledge of his revealed will, and wisely apply it to a situation, and then come up with wise approaches to a message.
But here’s what I have experienced: namely, that this wisdom, as I try to experience it and apply biblical truth, is shot through with the subjective influences of my heart, not just the mind figuring out how to apply a text — so that it would be presumptuous of me to say that I make my choices in such situations simply because I am wise, because I’m a Bible-applying wise person. Too much of the process is simply out of my control.
So, here’s how the decision was made, as best as I can remember it — or, even if it happened yesterday, as best as I think I know (because I think of a lot of things we don’t know about how we make decisions, even while we’re making them). This approach to decision-making would not be unusual in occasional preaching events like this, like speaking in a prison or at some other special situation.
Deciding the Text
So, I woke up that morning, and I was supposed to preach at three o’clock that afternoon at Lino Lakes Prison Fellowship, about 120 men in prison, and I had not prepared the message yet. I had four hours set aside that morning. And, present in my mind, before there was any conscious decision on my part at all, was Romans 8.
Now, this was striking, partly because I was tentatively planning to do something from Philippians 3:13: “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” I thought that would be a great text for men who were in prison and needed to get beyond what the past had done.
Instead, my first thought was that Romans 8 is the greatest chapter in the Bible. (And I really believe that.) If I’ve got one chance to speak, maybe I should deal with the greatest chapter in the Bible. And my next thought was this (or maybe it wasn’t a thought at all, but a feeling): “I love this chapter.” I love the reality that God communicated in this chapter. I love it.
Now, that was not a decision, right? That was not a decision. It wasn’t a result of any kind of extensive contemplation at that moment. It was a strong experience. I didn’t choose it, and that strong affection for Romans 8 may have been decisive. I suspect it was decisive, but I didn’t decide to love Romans 8 before I got out of bed. It was just there.
My next thought was this: “I know this chapter. I’ve lived in this chapter all my life, almost. In fact, I know it by heart. I could recite it to these men from memory.” And so, I paused before I got out of bed, Noël still asleep at my side, and I whispered the entirety of Romans 8. Yes, I’ve still got it. I could do this. I thought that might be impactful. If I look them right in the eye and take ten minutes and recite from memory, without looking down, the entirety of a chapter in the Bible — those guys have never heard that before, I’ll bet. What would that do to them, or for them? It seemed to me like a good idea.
The next thought was this: “I’ve only got four hours to get ready for this, and this is doable.” Philippians 3 might take more time than I have, because I don’t know it as well as Romans 8. So, you can see how sheer practicality figured into the spiritual dynamics of the moment. (Now, this is crucial.) I would be naive to say that didn’t count. Before I got out of bed, the decision was made: Romans 8. It’s going to be Romans 8.
Deciding the Approach
All I had to do now was to figure out, “Okay, what parts of Romans 8 in this mammothly glorious chapter am I going to emphasize?” And here again, hugely subjective inclinations mingled with rational thought. I decided on four focuses. (Why four? I don’t know.)
I would recite the chapter, then I would go to the beginning: “No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). I would go to the end: “Secondly, no separation from God ever, if you are in Christ Jesus and there’s no condemnation.” Third, I would connect the beginning and the end with my favorite verse in all the Bible, Romans 8:32, because of the logic that connects “no condemnation by the blood of Jesus” with the glorious everything that we get in the future.
And then it occurred to me: If I were these men (or if I were just me), I would be left with this question: “Okay, I hear all that good news about no condemnation if you’re in Christ. Am I? How can you know if you’re in Christ?” And that determined that my last focus, my helicopter landing in that chapter, was Romans 8:13–15. “How can you know you’re a child of God?”
So, that was the process — except for one thing that I haven’t mentioned, and it might be all-important, and I’ll bet our listeners know what I left out. For days, I had been praying, pleading, pleading with the Lord to guide me, show me, show me what Scripture and what approach would be most effective for salvation. What would be most effective for strengthening faith? And I am very, very thankful that, I think, he answered that prayer.
