This is the On Preaching Podcast with H.B. Charles Jr.

The podcast dedicated to helping you preach faithfully, clearly, and better.

Good day and thanks for listening to the podcast.

In this episode, I want to talk to you about the documents that you would find if you perused one of my study files on a particular sermon text.

Let me start at the beginning. I'm recording this episode as I do most episodes at my

study in Jacksonville, Florida at the Shiloh Church. I am surrounded by books. The bulk of my

library is in this room, but not only am I surrounded by, if you will, this cloud of witnesses that

literally surrounds me on all the walls in this room, but more importantly, I have in this

room several file cabinets. And these file cabinets reflect A, that I am a dinosaur. Indeed. But the file cabinets

also reflect that I am serious about keeping a record of what I have studied. There are three

file cabinets that I am looking at, and if there are three cabinets,

there are 15 shelves, and two of the shelves have sermon manuscripts. The rest of them are filled

with files from over the years where I have kept a record of my exegetical notes, my study notes

as I prepare to preach and teach. I don't know how far back these study notes go. I know that

there was a period in my ministry where I did not write anything down. I read very diligently, but I didn't write anything down. I kind of took

pride in the fact that I did not write anything down. But I think at one point, there was something

that I wanted to remember that I had studied, and I had to

start from scratch because I did not have any record of it, and I just decided that I didn't

want that to happen again.

I can also say that very early on, as a very young pastor, teacher, I wanted to write.

I wanted to write, and I wanted to keep a record of ideas that I had,

things that may not have made it into sermons, and even references from ideas that I picked up

...