Learning to write a sermon was fascinating and fun. I loved exegetical exploration and isagogical big-picture context. I learned main-point discovery and orderly thought progression whether with a deductive or inductive style. But applications? My mind went blank. It took me several years of sermon writing to find out how to fix that. There were two barriers. I didn’t know myself, and I didn’t know people.

A childhood fascination regarding stories of Native American stoicism in the face of hardship and trauma (“Thank you, James Fenimore Cooper!”) and the cultural expectation of “boys-don’t-cry,” didn’t help. I could put on the facade, “All is well,” to cover fears, anxiety, worries, and insecurity and greet others with a smile. I could fool myself into thinking that negative feelings or emotions would go away on their own, or that in and of themselves all emotions, and “feelings,” were sinful, or I could distract myself with the busyness of studying or ministry responsibilities, keeping my mind occupied … until the little voice inside kept squawking in the middle of the night. The result was a young preacher who wrestled with writing sermon applications because I didn’t know myself.

As my graduate tutor days were drawing to a close, I knew I would soon be serving as parish pastor. So I asked colleagues, roommates, and friends who were already in that role what I should do first. To a man the reply came, “Study your Bible, and visit your people.” I took that to heart and implemented that plan the day after my installation. Digging into and pondering Scripture for a devotional life and for sermon, church year, and Bible class began along with every-member visits.

Every-member visits were eye-opening. Looking back, it seems what I thought was normal was not. I had a very sheltered up-bringing. Shielded by the gospel? Yes! Lovingly so. I thought all families broke into four-part hymn singing in the station wagon. But my neighborhood and friends were all Lutherans, WELS Lutherans at that, and even my summer job experience was with fellow future and contemporary seminarians. My vicar year consisted primarily of shut-in and hospital visits. No evangelism calls. Having served as an undergrad and graduate tutor, I did not have a conversation with an unchurched or de-churched person until I was almost twenty-nine years old. Not until parish pastoring and those every-member-visits had I taken the time, zipped my lips, and opened my ears and heart to listen to people’s stories and begun to “know people. Slowly but surely—this did not happen overnight but took years—writing sermon applications became more personal, more pointed. First, the text convicted and convinced me personally and then blossomed into the recognition of specific law and specific gospel for the hearer. The key was not merely listening with sympathy but with empathy.

“Feelings follow facts.” That was great advice from a beloved seminary professor who shared his own faith journey from his youth through seminary days. That professor told of a time when he felt that God had answered his boyhood prayer to take his faith and give it to his folks just in case they needed that so they would end up in heaven. That seminary professor remembered that later one of his professors assured him that his faith had remained intact thanks to the message of the one and only Messiah and mighty Means at work since his baptism. As I learned to know myself better, with my conscience bothering me about past sins of commission and omission, I eventually came back to his story and realized that the professor was teaching us that feelings follow facts. Feelings do exist. God designed humans to have them, and they aren’t sinful in and of themselves. Pinning our eternal assurance on feelings is skating out on very thin ice. But ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist is just as dangerous and will make the preacher stuck in the mud of sermon writing that does not connect the text with people and people with the text because the text was absorbed in the brain but not in the heart of the preacher.

That personal story from the seminary professor rang a bell. No wonder he spoke, preached, and taught with such passion about Jesus and such compassion for his hearers! I can recall getting a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as he taught and when I heard him preach not because he was aiming for an emotional response but because the law and the gospel were so specific and personal to him (the preacher-teacher) and to me (the hearer). He proclaimed facts but in a way that did not ignore the reality of human feelings. Thus, the more I knew myself and my deeply embedded emotions, the more I was able to internalize the words and promises of God and strive ever better to connect the text to people and people to the text.

The dominant thought during my early sermon-writing days was that I was instructing people in the words and will of God. My sermons leaned heavily into being educational. But is that the primary goal of a sermon? I had to challenge myself, and I challenge you, dear brother, to ask yourself if a sermon, your sermon, is primarily educational or inspirational. My response to that has changed over the decades. Early on, primarily educational. Later came attempts to make education and inspiration balance. Now I strive for them to be primarily inspirational. Does it work each time? Have I achieved that with every sermon? Of course, not! But that has not stopped me from trying, from striving, from wrestling with a text in pondering and in prayer and asking, “How does this portion of Scripture connect to me and I to it, and how will I connect it to people and people to it?”

In text study you will surely always be asking, “What is God doing? What is God doing for me, for his people? What difference in my life and in my hearers’ lives does this text make?” But I submit that your sermons will better connect the text to people and people to the text when you learn more about human emotions. Ask yourself, “What emotions in me does this text touch?” Do some research into how God designed humans to have fear, anxiety, worries, insecurity, frustration, disappointment, guilt, shame, and loneliness, as well as joy, comfort, and confidence.” Listen to people’s stories, and “Preach the good news!”