In the early days of my ministry, an elderly minister said to me, \u201cDon\u2019t ever turn down an opportunity to preach.\u00a0\u00a0Always be ready.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Six decades later I\u2019ve done pretty well following his counsel and I am finally learning why he offered that advice,\u00a0\u00a0Every time I preach, I receive a special and unique blessing.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe it is the presence of someone who I\u2019d known in earlier years or in other places.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps, it is a new acquaintance who shares a greeting from a mutual friend.\u00a0\u00a0Recently I preached for a very small church, of mostly senior adults.\u00a0\u00a0I could have easily declined the invitation.\u00a0\u00a0Had I done so, I would have missed a comment of blessing from one who named for me, a number of her former pastors, asking if I knew them. Then she said, \u201cThis sermon blessed me today.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0How many sermons had she heard? How many times had she been blessed? But, she said, \u201cThis sermon\u201d was a blessing to her.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe that\u2019s why an elderly Paul, told a young Timothy,\u00a0\u201cPreach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season\u201d (2 Timothy 4:2).\u00a0\u00a0I suppose there is an exception to every story, and this story is no exception.\u00a0\u00a0There was the sweet, elderly lady in my second pastorate who said to me on her way out of the auditorium, \u201cBrother Dan, every sermon you preach is better than the next one.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Think about it.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile, be blessed, and be a blessing to someone today.<\/p>\n
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In the early days of my ministry, an elderly minister said to me, \u201cDon\u2019t ever turn down an opportunity to preach.\u00a0\u00a0Always be ready.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Six decades later I\u2019ve done pretty well following his counsel and I am finally learning why he offered that advice,\u00a0\u00a0Every time I preach, I receive a special and unique blessing.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe it is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3026,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions\/3026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}