When preaching hits home

Those of you who have read Stale Bread or the Preacher’s A to z will have come across my ‘organic preaching cycle’, as pictured below.

Just recently, though, I have noticed another cycle at work too:

See: in the quietness of prayer and study God graciously helps me to see what this passage is about in this context for these people.

Speak: the bit of the preacher’s job that everyone knows about, where she or he endeavours to convert the inspiration from the study into food for the congregation.

Hear: the moment when I not only preach the sermon – but hear it too. As a preacher I am as much under the Word’s influence as anybody else.

Do: just this morning I have acted on last night’s sermon and written to an influential Christian in my life to thank them for their example and encouragement.

The title of this post is written as a “hashtag” – something which generally helps people to find what they are looking for, and assembles together different insights on the same topic. I would love to assemble different views on how much and how well we listen to our own sermons. Is it something we avoid or something we embrace, I wonder?