Preaching So As To Reach The Heart (Part Two)
Back in April, Andrew Katay, CEO of City to City Australia, spoke as part of a series called ‘Church in Outbreak’ produced by Redeemer City to City. This podcast provided some thoughtful techniques on how to preach in such a way as to reach people’s hearts, and serves as the main inspiration and resource behind this article.
In the previous article we looked at a basic anthropological framework and glanced at the influence the heart has on our will, mind, body and gut. In an attempt to understand the implications this has for preaching, we highlighted the following quote by Andrew Katay: “What the heart desires, the will chooses, the mind justifies, the body does, and the gut feel good about.” Katay is not the first to make such observations. Augustine also connected the desires of our heart with our actions and emotions, and observed:
Love as you anticipate a good thing is desire.
Love as you experience that good thing in the present is joy.
Love as you anticipate a bad thing is fear.
Love as you experience that bad thing in the present is sadness.
If something you don’t love is taken away from you, you’re not sad about it. If something you don’t love is given to you, you’re not particularly happy about it. Desire and joy, fear and sadness, are forms of love. When we talk about preaching to the heart, we are talking about knowing the forms of love which dwell in the hearts of our listeners—and how these ‘loves’ influence their actions.
With this in mind Katay turns his attention to two practical suggestions by Timothy Keller, which help us preach so as to reach the heart.
Turn any application in a sermon into a heart issue by asking, “why do the desires of our heart make this thing difficult to do?”
We can preach by simply telling people to be generous with their money, and then offer advice on how to manage their budget. But this merely involves speaking to the will, or speaking to the mind. We are helping people to understand the subject of generosity, then calling them to go and do what they now understand. The assumption is that people simply don’t understand what generosity is? Surely most people already know what it means to be generous? For some people the problem might be that they don’t have enough will-power to be generous, but as preachers we are called to consider what is happening at a deeper level. If the heart is the wellspring of all our actions (Proverbs 4:23, Matthew 15:19, James 1:14-15, and James 4:1), any lasting transformation must come through the heart. The question then becomes, “Why, in terms of the heart, do we find generosity so difficult?” Having turned the application of our sermon into a question, we can now set about applying the gospel to a particular difficulty.
How do we preach the gospel into this category?
The answer as to why someone might find generosity difficult could be:
they see themselves as being poor
they desire to be wealthy
they prioritize a comfortable lifestyle
Each of these answers finds itself rooted in a heart issue.
“When we talk about preaching to the heart, we are talking about knowing the forms of love which dwell in the hearts of our listeners—and how these ‘loves’ influence their actions.”
The Apostle Paul, when calling people to generosity (2 Corinthians 8-9), doesn’t try to get people to understand they are wealthier than others. Even though some Corinthians will have had more money than other people, Paul still takes them to the gospel: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul takes them to the heart and encourages them to grasp what Jesus Christ has already accomplished.
Paul seems to suggest that if people can grasp in their hearts that by Jesus’ poverty (as he emptied himself on the cross) they have become rich (they have every spiritual blessing in the spiritual realm which can never be taken away from them), it will release generosity within them. Paul sees an outward change in generosity resulting from a change in the heart.
While it is possible to get people to be more generous by appealing to their minds and wills, if this is all we do, it will be something other than the love of Christ which fills their heart:
“I’ll be well thought of by my pastor if I increase my giving”
“I will feel better about myself if I become more generous”
“God is more likely to answer my prayers and grant me a Christian husband, if I increase my tithes and offerings.”
For these people there might be outward change, but unintentionally the preacher has confirmed their hearts in something other than Jesus Christ. God has become a means to an end. They are no longer being generous for God’s sake, they are being generous for their own sake. Only the radical, generous, unconditional love of God will shock a heart into a biblical expression of generosity.
About the Author — Damian Grateley
Damian is married to Utako and they were both educated at Regents Theological College (affiliated with Manchester University), in the United Kingdom. They have been involved in ministry from an early age and have a heart to see a new generation of church planters well equipped to bring spiritual, social and cultural renewal through the Gospel, to themselves, their families and the city.