Appetise don’t just expect

It is so easy to communicate expectation. 

For instance, “Christians should desire heaven”. That is a statement of expectation and potentially a statement of pressure.  Preaching in churches all over the world is full of such statements. 

Churches easily become sanctified gyms where the preachers function as the personal trainers, conveying expectation and pressure to the struggling masses.

Now I am not saying that we should fail to communicate expectation when the biblical text does so. However, it probably offers less context-less pressure than we tend to think. 

Always take a look and see what the context is offering by way of motivation.  If it is about conviction pure and simple, then by all means, communicate that. 

But so often there is a rich bed of gospel motivation underlying statements we can so easily pluck and apply.

Instead of defaulting to mere expectation (with its twin sibling pressure), why not look for ways to stir the appetites of your listeners. 

It takes far more skill to describe fine food so that your listeners salivate than it does to tell them they should eat a balanced diet.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. This article first appeared on his blog Biblical Preaching.