One of my former co-pastors, a retired truck-driver-turned-minister, has the most intense prayer life I know. While he’s never told me how much time he spends praying every day, I have been with him enough to figure it out. At least 2-3 hours per day. Who is this guy, Daniel? A few years ago, I saw him interact with a member on the subject of prayer. The man told his pastor he just could not focus on praying very much. He was lucky is he could spend five minutes alone with God. I was watching this conversation, waiting for the pastoral equivalent of a hydrogen bomb, this poor guy had no idea what a prayer warrior he was talking to! Instead of a rebuke, however, this pastor simply asked him, “Do you really think you can devote five minutes to prayer each day?” The member thought he could. “That’s great,” my co-pastor said with a smile, “don’t worry about the minutes on the clock so much — just know that those five minutes are the best minutes of your day.” That five-minute-prayer-midget has become a prayer juggernaut over the years.

Read the first nine verses of 1 Corinthians chapter one when you have some time. Knowing that he has to address the myriad of deficiencies (referenced earlier in this article) in the Corinthians, he actually starts by calling attention to areas where he has seen growth and change! He commends them for the grace he sees at work in them, the way they have been enriched in every way, the way they are not lacking in spiritual gifts (that’s right, even in this area of significant abuse he finds something to celebrate!), and the certainty that Christ will bring them all the way to glory. Paul is committed to celebrating grace’s effects first, before he points areas in need of correction.

3. Guilt pressures. Grace encourages.

Remember that old song by the Fugees, Killing Me Soflty? Change the lyrics slightly and you’ve got several of my past sermons. Stoking my pain with his sermons/ slicing my life with his words/ killing me softly with his psalm/ killing me softly with his psalm. The psalm was 119. The occasion was the second week of a Sunday School series I had been teaching on memorizing the word of God. A whopping three people had been in attendance the first week, and the time had come for a sermonic thrashing. Sure the sermon was biblically sound, who could argue with the psalmist’s commitment to meditate on the Scripture? But the stench of pastoral desperation must have been wafting through the sanctuary that day. Anybody with two ears could have seen that the message was little more than a high-pressure infomercial for the Sunday School class. Next week, two people were in attendance.

A year later I was on Sabbatical visiting another church that had been promoting a similar class. The “inside information” I had obtained suggested attendance was sparse here as well. I was kicking myself when the pastor invited a member in the class to share just what a positive experience she was having memorizing Scripture. No preaching, no platitudes, no pressure. Why didn’t I think of that? Grace always encourages. I love Phillip’s words to the skeptical Nathaniel when Christ was just starting his ministry, “Come and see.” Grace knows how life changing the gospel is when people are invited to experience it; it has no need to pressure.

I used to think that if I preached enough sermons on the topic of grace, I was a grace-oriented preacher. But grace can be served up in a sea of guilt-gravy. Conversely, it’s actually possible to preach on repentance and sanctification in grace-saturated message — this is the way of the New Testament, the way of Paul, the way of Jesus. True, guilt is great for short-term dramatics, but grace is for the long road of life in the kingdom.

With an eye trained to look for conviction’s subtle impostor, guilt can be exposed and eliminated before we step into the pulpit. And when we do slip back into guilt’s clutches (and we will), we may see the many “Judases” we have made in a given Sunday and rush to their aid before its too late. May God make our very mouths fountains of grace for our sheep that wander in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

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Greg Dutcher is Teaching Pastor of Christ Fellowship Church in Abingdon, MD.