You don’t have to buy a fire pit, but you must find ways to invest in your kids; to teach them diligently as you sit and as you walk and when you lie down. Remember, you have 936 Saturdays. Unless you are reading this today with 9 year old, in which case you have half that many. Time is fleeting. You have opportunities and responsibilities, but you don’t have forever.

The days are long, but the years are short.
These are wise words that were spoken to Angela and I when our kids were younger. Our oldest son turned fifteen last week, and I was reminded again of the sage wisdom. Some days as a parent seem to last a month. And yet, as holidays roll arounds or birthdays are celebrated, we all find ourselves sounding more and more like our parents, “they sure do grow up fast.”
My days are numbered with my kids. From birth to eighteen (when we sort of hope they will begin to leave the nest), I have about 936 weekends. 936 Saturdays. 936 Sundays. Actually, I don’t even have all of those. Of the 936 Saturdays that my kids will spend on this earth during their first 18 years, many of them will be spent away from me. I may travel, they might go to a friend’s house or visit with grandparents.
My 936 gets cut down to 836 or 736. If you happen to be a family separated by divorce, you may only have your kids half of those days. Maybe your number is 400 or 425.
Depressed yet?
I hope not. I’m not writing to depress anyone, just to remind you all that the days may be long, but the years are short. Because the years are short, it is imperative that we invest all we can in the years that we have.
In our family, one of our efforts at investment is to get away from screens regularly and spend time enjoying each other. That means we love walks and sports. It also means that we have to double-down on entertainment ideas that keep us away from the television.
That’s why we bought a fire pit.
Angela and I wanted to create an excuse to be outside together. But, we also are realistic. Sometimes, our kids find us boring and sometimes getting them away from screens is a fight.
But, kids don’t find fire boring.
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Brothers, don’t be afraid that you will fail to impress your hearers. Be afraid of preparing a feast for your members while you go home, week after week, famished. Pray for the humility and faith that you need as a preacher to be first a partaker of the fruit of your study.

There are not many callings in this fallen world that surpass the privilege of preaching. God has ordained that preaching would cause the light of his glory to shine upon sin-darkened hearts. He regularly uses preaching to bring into submission at the feet of Christ the lies that have long enslaved his people’s hearts and minds. And he desires that preaching would cause the knowledge of the holy to be advanced through the church. In short, preaching is a high calling. 
And yet, in and around the shadows of the pulpit, soul-damning dangers lurk. Men better than us have fallen prey to the pitfalls of the pulpit. In this article, I want to articulate three dangers that threaten my own soul as a preacher who is desirous to fulfill his ministry. I pray for myself and my readers that the God who is able to keep us from stumbling will preserve us in this high and holy calling.
1. We can Mistake Knowing the Truth for Trusting in the Truth
As expository preachers, it’s our business to know God’s word. Ignorance has no place in the pulpit. Our task is to mine the truths of the Scriptures and proclaim them to our people with precision, persuasion, and passion. In a world where truth in the pulpit is sadly uncommon, many who listen to us come with the bare-minimum desire to be taught the truth plainly.
The danger, of course, is that there will be theologically sound preachers in hell. After all, “The demons also believe and tremble” (James 2:19). It’s easy to teach on the sovereignty of God while clinging to the idol of control. It’s easy to preach on the glory of God while seeking our own glory. It’s easy to flesh out justification by faith alone while finding our justification in our preaching of justification by faith alone. Indeed, “when I want to do what is good, evil is with me” (Romans 7:18-19). 
We must not be deceived: no one was ever cured by selling medicine. For us the insult, “physician, heal thyself” must humble us and constantly call us to be partakers of the same remedy we prescribe. Our first calling must not be to expository preaching but to believing in Jesus. Our weekly labour must be aimed at more than ascending our pulpits with manuscripts spelling out God’s truth; we must aim for consciences cleansed by Christ’s blood, hearts singing of his matchless love, and minds captivated by the greatness of our God.
We must grow in the habit of responding to our own sermons in faith and repentance before and after we descend our pulpits. The best example I have seen of this is from a faithful pastor from across town who would often, as he interacted with his people after his preaching, share with his members the part of the sermon that most impacted him. He was a good model to me of maintaining my place under the rule of God’s word as a preacher.
Brothers, don’t be afraid that you will fail to impress your hearers. Be afraid of preparing a feast for your members while you go home, week after week, famished. Pray for the humility and faith that you need as a preacher to be first a partaker of the fruit of your study.
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Thomas had been told by the other disciples that Jesus was raised, and until the end of time every human being stands in exactly the same place as Thomas at that first meeting. We, like Thomas, have heard the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ disciples: “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas’s absence at that first encounter was not accidental. Jesus arranged it that way, for us. We stand in Thomas’s shoes. We have heard the eye-witnesses. Thomas is us. But unlike Thomas, we do not have opportunity to see the risen Jesus with our own eyes, or to touch him with our own hands. We are “blessed,” therefore, if we do what Thomas did not do, but should have done. We are blessed if we believe the disciples’ reasonable and reliable eyewitness testimony. What’s at stake? Everything.

Easter has long been my top bit of the year. It is the time of crisp autumn weather. It is the time of the delicious Friday-Tuesday break. It is the time of hot cross buns and chocolate eggs. And it is the time when some bishop somewhere writes to the paper to explain why we don’t have to believe in the resurrection.
I lie awake wondering what they think they will accomplish by this. Do they think that we will be impressed with their “courage” and “honesty”? Do they think that the general public, relieved that being a Christian no longer means believing in Jesus’ resurrection, will flock with shouts of joy into our churches?
Does it not occur to these antishepherds that they just confirm the public’s vague hypothesis (false, as a matter of fact), that there is no real problem with staying out of the church?
Does it not occur to them that the truly honest thing, if they can no longer believe what is at the beating heart of Christian thought, would be to give up their fat salaries, oak-lined studies, and grand titles, and walk away from the Christian church? Would not the courageous thing be to cease feeding parasitically on the church, and to start their own organization concordant with their own beliefs?
As depressing as this is, however, unbelief in the physical resurrection of Jesus should never surprise us. The Gospel of John frankly describes, explains it, and challenges it. For, long before the unbelieving bishops of our day, there was Thomas, one of the Twelve.
The Original Doubting Thomas
Listen to John’s description of what happened on the Sunday after Good Friday, when Jesus was falsely condemned, scourged, mocked, stripped naked, nailed to a cross until dead, and then buried.

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. (John 20:19-20)

Jesus had already appeared to Mary Magdalene, and she had already told the surviving disciples that she had seen Jesus alive. Yet they are cowering behind locked doors. Jesus does not knock and enter, but appears suddenly, his body transformed by resurrection to be able to appear and disappear at will.
Surely they turned white with fear at Jesus’ sudden appearance, partly explaining his “Peace be with you!” He displays to them the nail marks of his crucifixion, and terror dissolves into joy. The Lord is alive! Wonderfully, physically alive!
But Someone Was Missing
Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” (John 20:24-25).
Thomas was a twin, for that is the meaning of Ta’oma’ in Aramaic, and didymus in Greek. An interesting detail. Now if you were Thomas, what would you have thought about this report? What would you have said in response? Perhaps something like this:

“Now I know these men. I have lived life with them for three years. They wouldn’t lie about something this important. They can’t all have hallucinated the same thing. And they saw a physical body, not a spectre. Besides, Jesus had foretold on many occasions that he would die, and then rise to life. I should rejoice with them!”

Instead, Thomas did the following:

But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” (John 20:25).

On the face of it, Thomas’s conditions seem reasonable: “I just want to see some evidence for myself. I need to know for myself that this is not a ghost or an imposter. This is the standard of evidence I want: not listening to the eyewitness authority of others, but seeing and hearing and touching for myself.”
Notice that though this seems reasonable, this is not the standard that we apply in many crucial areas of our lives.
No court of law operates on this basis.
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