Think about the message that gets communicated when a preacher says, “Instead of preaching from Ephesians today, I’m going to share what’s on my heart.” This suggests a dichotomy between biblical preaching and passionate, heart-felt communication. It pits preaching against sharing one’s heart. This is a fatal flaw because a Spirit-produced passion for the truth of the gospel and its bearing on life must drive a biblical sermon! Passion and the biblical text must not be separated.

Sometimes, God’s Spirit prompts me to interrupt a series of sermons on Genesis or Romans to address a particular situation or need. But this usually takes me to another text of Scripture. It’s simply wrong to suggest that I have to do something else than preach a biblical sermon in order to speak with passion from the heart. How can a serious, prayerful study of Scripture not produce a heart-felt sermon?!

Now I’m not suggesting that we always speak from the heart when we preach Scripture. Of course we don’t! The evil one tries anything to undermine our preaching. He will work to reduce, dilute, misdirect, or mask our passion for God. But let’s not conclude from our struggle that preaching and sharing from the heart are two different realities. We, preachers, are responsible to speak from the heart every time we open up the text of Scripture. One of my greatest fears about preaching is that I might get up to preach on Sunday morning because ‘I have to say something.’ My prayer is that every time I get up to preach, it’s because ‘I have something to say.’

So, be careful about sending mixed signals when you’re tempted to say, “This week, I’m going to share from my heart instead of preaching.” Let’s not separate what God has joined together!