Panel - Session 6 | 2025 LA Preachers' Conference

The Role of Prayer and Spirit Dependence in Preaching

Thank you, Bobby and Nam, for the encouraging word. I was thinking, as I was listening to the two of you, that really the two talks are kind of two sides of the same coin. You know, whenever I'm less confident that I know what God's saying in the text is when I tend to be most tempted to depend on myself or start to preach in my own power. My question for all three of you is: Thank you for your talk, Bobby, on depending on the Spirit. What ways have you guys tried to implement prayer and spirit dependence in your preaching as you prepare to preach?

I mean, for me, it's just kind of a normal means of grace. It's what you said, John; it's just prayer. If you guys are pastors, you guys know how harried your week is. And as you get older, like, I don't know why, but yeah, like something, I just can't put my mind together. And so with busyness, the temptation is always to be neglectful of devotion and prayer, and to try to pray regularly throughout our preparation, our time in the Scriptures. I think it's just normal stuff. I don't know that I have any magic formula, and I appreciate, I was praying that the Holy Spirit would work because I don't know why I was stumbling so much.

I think it's fatigue. We're getting old. And he drove like last night. I kept telling him, "Man, we need to leave. We're old. We need to leave." So, he stayed all late, and they had an hour and a half drive here this morning. You didn't get sleep. So, just to the older brothers here, one of my mentors told me, because when I was younger, I would just stay up to 2 o'clock at night and get up at 6:00, and when I was preaching, I would just study all night long and I wouldn't sleep. And then I started struggling, and I told one of my mentors, "I'm really starting to struggle." He said, "How much did you sleep?" I said, "3 hours, four hours." He said, "You need to sleep." So if you can, brothers, God doesn't need the sleep, but you do. So when you're preaching, make sure you get some sleep.

Suffering, Dependence, and Humility in Ministry

That's really good. I'd add, God is making you the instrument he wants you to be and use you. And I think Thomas said it well, even through suffering. So I just think when my daughter got cancer, and she literally, we went to four funerals with four other families; they all died. My daughter's the only survivor. She was the sickest one out of everybody. And while we went through that, God did something amazing in my heart. And I'd been preaching for a long time. I said I've been a pastor 31 years, but I did college ministry for five years before that, so I've been preaching a long time. But through that season of suffering, I really experienced the truth that I didn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God.

He humbled you by letting you go hungry; then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. — Deuteronomy 8:3 (CSB)

There are different ways you can know things. When you come out of seminary, it's in here; it's in your head. And God just really drove that into my heart through suffering. And it made me pray in different ways, and I read in different ways after that. And not always, I mean, you know, he'll just humble you again and bring you back down. He loves that we're weak. You don't like it, but Paul boasted in it. We've got to get to the place where I couldn't protect my daughter. I had a house fire; I couldn't, I'm homeless, and God, I just had to, like, just really depend upon God.

And so learning that as a pastor, God will teach you that. Trust me, if you've been in the pastorate for less than 10 years, you don't even know that yet. But you're going to keep learning, and you'll keep growing, and you'll suffer, and you'll keep suffering. You'll learn to depend more and more on him. And that will push you deeper into a real kind of trust in prayer. And then he'll let you fail enough where you, like, when I preached this one sermon, I thought it was all great, and the elder came up to me like, "What was that?" So we just will learn through failing, and God is just happy to let you fail and humble you, and so he gets the glory. But you'll learn how to pray better when you learn how to depend more, and your struggles and suffering will do that.

So practically, yeah, I'm just praying while I'm preparing. I'm literally praying while I'm preaching. I'm like, "Oh Lord, help me. Help them. Help us." And then you pray afterwards. But you just, it's more you just have to learn to have, I mean, we pray and have our times of prayer, but it's really Paul says, "Pray without ceasing." There's a part where you mature in life where you just know you can't do anything apart from Christ, especially not preach, and you're just always learning to depend upon God and with that attitude of prayer, and you're vocalizing it to him often throughout your day, but you're just depending upon God. God will teach you that; you'll learn that as a pastor.

Brothers, thank you for preaching. I think both of those things that you preached on this morning were deeply helpful. Brother, your preaching just reminded us that we don't have to be like cultural juggernauts. We just got to preach simply what the Bible tells us to preach. Just preach God's word to people. And then, brother, your sermon uniquely helped to, I think, eradicate any sense of imposter syndrome. We don't have to preach like other people, just to preach the way God has made us. To answer the question about preparation, I think similarly, there's not like some special formula. So if you're looking for like the magic, I think the magic is in just the simple, desperate cries for help that happens, I think, before you even approach the text, while you're in the text, while you're preparing to preach the text, and as you're preaching the text. It's just like breathing, "Help, help me to get out of the mix of it, and help Jesus to be exalted," because I think I can tend to get all mixed up in that. So, it's just a simple practice of prayer and dependence. "Lord, help." And brother, like the sleeping thing, I wish to God I could sleep. That's usually me, like 2:00 in the morning, you know, wrestling through it. And, uh, yeah, sleep is a good gift. When the Lord gives it, take it. Amen.

Yeah. Can I add one quick thing? So, I found myself praying different ways through the process. Just when I'm doing my exegesis, I want to understand the text. And then, I mean, I'll know the text, but I won't have a sermon. And then I'm just really praying, "God, you got to give me a sermon. God, you got to give me a sermon." I'm, and I feel like the hour is clicking, but I don't see how to take what the text is saying and press it into the hearts of the people I'm preaching to. And don't do this, I'm really, don't, don't do my, my, my co-pastor. He's always rebuking me. He says, "Bobby, you got to land your plane." I literally have changed my sermon outline while I was sitting in the front pew. I won't, I won't lock into what I'm going to preach until I'm in the pulpit. And sometimes, in the pulpit, I might even change it. But I'm really just praying, "God, show me what I need, a sermon." Oh, and then I'm like, and if this one doesn't work, then I'm just changing it. And then I walk into the pulpit. But I'm asking God, "Show me what you have from this text to your people." And I don't print my sermon outline on Thursday. Like, "Well, it's done." I'm just pregnant. And I'm giving, I'm giving birth up there. Sorry for the graphic illustration, but I'm like, I'm pregnant until it comes out, and it doesn't come out on Thursday for me. I'm praying all the way to Sunday morning when I walk into the pulpit.

That's awesome. Love it. Sorry. On that note, we have a couple minutes for questions. So if you have a question that's brief, that'll be helpful for everyone, that isn't dumb, feel free, raise your hand, and we'll pass the mic out to you. Alex Hong, Christian Fellowship Bible Church, West Covina.

Cultural Relevance in Expository Preaching

In our setting, I think most of us would be for expository preaching. And, uh, I'm just thinking in the light of recent events, you know, we don't want to be culturally relevant, but, you know, with social media algorithms hearing that people influencers saying, "You should leave your church, your pastor doesn't do X, Y, or Z." When is it appropriate to be relevant? And again, you know, I think everyone "amen" expository preaching here, but, uh, wisdom in that because I've been feeling more of that pressure in the past few years because of social media.

Yeah, I, two things. One, I would say if I can quote Mark Dever from last year, when he talked about parenting, "Play the long game." So when we're discipling our people well, they don't get bumped everywhere by the next, you know, news headline story; they're mature enough and they can really think that through. So you want to just disciple your people, and that's just, you're just going through the book. You're preaching through the Bible, applying the Bible as the Holy Spirit is moving, and so you're preaching the Bible. And in Ephesians 4, the saints mature. We grow in maturity. Young believers are like, "Oh, did you see the news in the world? The sky is falling." Well, the sky is not falling. I mean, well, you know, the politics, we went through a civil war. This is not that. Do you know what I mean? So, for us, it's always like whatever is in front of us is the biggest thing we've ever seen for someone who's not mature. So, you want to just keep preaching the word of God. But then there are certain things that happen that really wound and hurt your congregation or excite your congregation or bring fear to your congregation. You have to know your saints. And we weep with those who weep. We mourn with those who mourn. Rejoice with those who rejoice. So, God has situated us as churches in America. And we want to be light and salt in those places. So we want to touch, you know, in relevant ways the culture we're around to be light and salt to it. So when I'm saying, well, when the, I think from the implication of the text, what Paul is kind of doing, I just, "I'm preaching Christ and I'm crucified." There's some hyperbole to that. You just read the book of 1 Corinthians, he's saying, "Yeah, yeah, I got to stop hanging out temple prostitutes," and that was a religious practice. So he's dealing with where they were situated. So that answer the question, Alex?

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. — Romans 12:15 (CSB)

Yeah. One thing that I think might be helpful, and I try to do this, I don't do this perfectly, but is a helpful delineation between how culture is impacting you personally and then how it's impacting my congregation. So, for example, the whole Charlie Kirk situation and then social media is blowing up and all kinds of pastors are getting on there like, "You better say something, say his name or, you know, whatever." Like that might make me feel a particular way, but that's not going to impact my congregation. My congregation doesn't feel anything. Now, if that cultural moment is having a huge impact on my congregation where they're either mourning or they're trying to process or they're confused, well then I think it's dependent upon us to care for the unique context in which God has placed us. So, I would agree with you, Bobby. I think there has to be a knowledge of the sheep. Because some of the older members are not on social media, or they have no clue of what's going on. But I think there is a danger of, you know, "Hey, we're, we're doing," you know, Philippians 3 when the elephants in the room after some massive, you know, event has happened, and there has to be some wisdom and knowing the sheep and how to pastor them well in that.

The Power of Faithful Local Preaching

Thanks, brother. James, last question. Thank you, brothers, for bringing God's word and really speaking to my heart and my aspirations. Bobby, your talk on what kind of preacher we want to be, it just reminded me a lot of, um, just kind of, you know, we, we are in circles where John MacArthur, you know, is a giant, but, uh, it's really interesting in other circles he's perceived in a similar way, but for different reasons. One of them being, um, in our, I'm a Presbyterian, so, um, please don't judge me. I, I call myself a "pedobaptist." So anyways, um, Hughes often, Old. I don't know if you're familiar with his work, *The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the History of the Christian Church*. And his most recent volume before he passed away was on the modern preaching of God's word. And he has a little section in there on two preachers, at least, John Stott and John MacArthur. And it's interesting he says something to the effect that, you know, by all other kind of metrics, John MacArthur preaches straight from the Scriptures. He just, he's preaching from the Scriptures. And the same was said of John Stott. And yet they were so powerful. There they, um, had large followings, and his conclusion, Old's conclusion at the end of it, was that's where their power was. The power of preaching is the preaching of God's word. And I really appreciate, uh, Scott, you bringing that home to all of us. My question is, are there preachers in your own orbits or people that you appreciate where you're like, "By all measure, they're not supposed to be impacting the way that they do, or they haven't, or they're not supposed to be impacting people the way that they do because of this particular characteristic"?

I, I think if I'm hearing what you're saying, James, correctly, it's, uh, examples in our own life of preachers that we know that other people might not know that demonstrate that kind of dependence on the spirit. Just a powerful preaching.

Yeah. I, I love what Mark Dever kind of does and, um, he, he just uses guys in his orb of influence who have congregations of 30 members. He's, he's just not, we get attached in America that big is better and it means you're better if you have a bigger congregation. You must be a better preacher. My favorite preacher had a congregation of, well, one of my favorite preachers had a congregation of 50 people. He was an amazing exegetical preacher. Gosh, he was good with the Greek text. Every time I hear him preach, you could just hear him having wrestled through the text and he's making it clear. Nobody knows him. But, um, man, he was just so faithful to just, when you heard him, you're like, "That's what the Bible says. That's what God is saying." Yeah. Just so good. His name is Steve Black. Um, yeah, there are just tons of guys in local churches that are so, so, so faithful. I, I, I don't know that God is doing this, but we were talking yesterday, and I get a sense that we may be getting towards the end of the era of the celebrity pastor, which would be so nice for you all because you just feel like, "Gosh, I'm not like this guy and that guy," and therefore, "I'm not a good pastor, preacher." Um, but God, he really equips us to shepherd his church. And there are a lot of good local church preachers I've heard. I mean, in this room, I mean, John Lee is great. I loved the sermon last night. So, and Thomas is famous, so I didn't mention Thomas, and Nam is famous, but John's not famous. And that was, that, this is what I heard. That was an amazing theological sermon I heard last night. I was super encouraged.

I love all three of these brothers. So, I would just commend them as examples. Like I said, this conference is mainly for me, uh, just to hear from them. Ed Moore in New York, uh, faithfully pastoring the same congregation for over 30 years, and his sermons are so Christ-centered, Christ-exalting, humble, encouraging, obligatory. I love hearing him. And, uh, I don't think Steve is in here, but, uh, Steve Darus pastored this church for 11, 12 years. And, um, during the first couple months of me being here, we, uh, we got to overlap for a year, and being able to hear him preach, and, uh, not being a perfect man. But I, I remember after one Sunday, towards the end of his sermon, just in tears, looking at his congregation and telling them, "You have a pastor who loves you," and it's because "God loves you." I was just thinking, "Man, I, I hope my ministry can reflect that someday." So, thanks for the question, brothers.