I’ve spent the last several hours preparing for tomorrow. Saturday evening is always preparation time. Me and my daughters go over to church, go over the music for the next morning, and I “trial run” my sermon. This usually helps me find difficult wording or typos in my manuscript. Yes, I usually have a full manuscript in front of me. Over the years, it has become more of a guideline. I type it out so I can get the flow of the full sermon while preparing and so that I can publish it for my sermon blog. At one point, I was keeping them our on church’s website, but starting the end of this month, all my sermons will be there. One of the reasons is to allow feedback, good or bad. Sometimes the written sermon is almost identical to the preached sermon, sometime they are very distant relatives, but that’s where I let the Holy Spirit work, during the preaching.

Tomorrow, I head for Victory Mountain Camp in Sophia, NC. That will be my home for the week as I lead worship and serve at FLAME. I’m looking forward to being refreshed. It’s amazing how serving others can put your ministry back into perspective. I love being able to encourage others in working out God’s call in their lives. Why do I do it? God has called me to invest back into the lives of men and women the way others have invested in me.

My last post talked about influence and those over the years that have had an influence on me. My question is for you is, “who are you influencing?”