This week I attended the Preach the Word Conference at Venture Church in Los Gatos, California.

Here are 7 questions to ask yourself before preaching by Francis Chan

1. Am I more concerned about what the people will think or what God will think?

Am I preaching in the presence of God and saying what God wants us to say?

Preaching for the glory of God

Jeremiah 1 – don’t be afraid of people, be afraid of God

Am I preaching with purity?

2. Do I really love these people I’m speaking to?

Here are my brothers and sisters, how can I help them live without regret. Or am I trying to make them like me?

You can be a successful pastor in the US without loving anyone

3. Am I accurately presenting this passage?

Am I trying to appease people or preaching the word?

Study. The church is changing like the world and going along with the world.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 is the church not the world but don’t consider some of these things to be sin anymore. Who doesn’t have a Facebook page that talks about them. All the best pictures that make my life look good. Lovers of pleasure, money. Looking at authority as a bad thing.

Do we water it down or keep the line?

4. Am I depending on the Spirit’s power or my own cleverness?

John 6:63 the flesh is of no help at all. Really?!!! Yes!

We are dead in our trespasses and sins. Go to the cemetery and raise ONE person. Not revival but one body. What would you do? Bring a good band? Tell a humorous story? Be clever?

Am I falling on my face or depending on the flesh?

5. Have I applied this message to my own life?

Integrity, knowing God, abiding in Him.

6. Will this message draw attention to me or to God?

Our heart must want God to be glorified.

7. Do these people desperately need this message?

Paul’s unceasing anguish, urgency, the supernatural vs entertainment, the unexplainable

70 families in China adopted 160 special needs kids. The whole town surrendered to self.

If the world knew, what bad would they say?