Last Sunday evening a fifty-something year old guy approached me after the Element service to express his thanks for the sermon. He was profusely appreciative and complimentary. Expounding on the greatness and the wonder of the glory of God in His wrath and His mercy from Habakkuk 3 had clearly resonated deeply with him.

I thanked him for his kindness and then shared with him that the message had occurred in spite of my weekly struggle with the temptation to offer something else.

We talked about that for a while, and another reason I gave for aiming high -- and by that, I mean in subject matter, not in quality of presentation, although obviously I don't try to suck either -- is that I don't want to leave the building in my car, get hit on the interstate and die, and have people be able to say, "His last message was on our inner potential to be awesome." Or whatever. I want to teach so that if any given message is my last, it can't be said that I went out failing to have preached the gospel, failing to have proclaimed the glory of God.

Why do we settle for less?
When we have in the endless fountain of Scripture "the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God" and "the unsearchable riches of Christ" why do we break even for one week from that stuff to preach the searchable riches of us? Why do we press pause on the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God in the amazing gospel of grace to press play on the Seven Steps to Being a Better Person?