My message on Easter Sunday 2016 was one of the hardest sermons I’ve ever had to deliver in my life. The subject was the resurrection of Jesus. It was hard because two weeks earlier my eldest brother had died. He was 57 and I loved him. His death, the fifth in my family in two years, was unexpected and traumatic as were all the others
Three suicides and two sudden deaths leave you reeling. The last couple of years have felt like I have been standing in the middle of a nuclear fallout zone. Marriages lying in ruins, families torn apart, windows of hope shattered, pathways forward strewn with the detritus of heartbreak. I conducted the funerals for most of them too. It’s hard to be faithful to God when those you love the most wonder where he is, why he’s let their lives fall apart and most of them aren’t Christians. Preaching resurrection is difficult when you smell the stench of death clinging to you. Yet I have kept preaching and teaching through these last few years. What has helped me to keep going? There are many things, but let me highlight three – calling, confidence and vulnerability
