By Steven Lambert
Today I preached the greatest sermon I never preached!
I preached it not from a pulpit, but from a recliner chair in a chemotherapy clinic!
I preached it not from notes I had meticulously prepared beforehand, but completely extemporaneously, impromptu, from the memory vault of my real life story—my his-tory!
I preached it in the space of 40 minutes to two fellow cancer patients of proximate age also receiving chemotherapy to combat cancer seated adjacent to me IN A CORNER of the TREATMENT room of the chemo clinic and to a gaggle of highly-trained, competency-certified, and extremely caring chemotherapy treatment registered nurses, whose normal banter (task-related and everything but) for this 40 minutes gradually settled down to a loud hush, allowing only for the absolute necessary nurse-talk! (I’ve never heard that room, though eventually filled with fellow patients, so [eerily] quiet in the many months I have been a patient there!)
It was the greatest sermon I NEVER preached because I didn’t preach it….I merely told it under (in hindsight) one of the strongest anointings I have ever ministered under! It just flowed like a RIVER!
It consisted of the best sermon points of any sermon I’ve ever preached in 47 years of preaching! I witnessed the eyes of many of the hearers involuntarily, unstoppably, flood with the wetness of heart-pierced tears!
It was mind-blowing in its simultaneous simplicity and profundity!
Still, as I write, I am totally amazed at what the Lord did in 40 minutes of this 24-hour period at the moment I write this is 12 hours plus in!
Frankly, and in all genuine modesty, it’s the greatest sermon I’ve ever heard, despite the fact that it was me delivering it! (I feel like Moses who scribed the Pentateuch and the biographical testimony: “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)” [Num 12:3]
Just before I stood up to leave, the man sitting next to me said, “Please pray for me and my healing!” I said, “I already have and am” and explained that since I had been coming there, I prayed for everyone present in the room and even building, which included patients, nurses, doctors, and administrative staff. I said, “Since I’ve been coming here, I ask the Lord to impress each person’s face I see walking through or sitting somewhere in the building on my mind so that I can pray for them all daily!” I confessed that I am not saying I fast and pray for hours for each one, but I don’t believe that is necessary for God to hear and act on my petitions on their behalf! In unison they said strongly, “THAT’S RIGHT! AMEN! I BELIEVE THAT! My eyes welled up then and now as I write this!
As I shook each of their hands at my departure and deliberately fixed my eyes on theirs until their eyes were fixed on mine, I sensed the silently echoing of the words of the Apostle Peter, who “along with John fixed his gaze on” the man begging for alms outside the Temple, “and said, “Look at US!” (Acts 3:4)!
In that fleeting moment each of these men saw in my gaze the only Jesus they will ever see on this side of Heaven!
In that brief, poignant moment, neither will ever forget, they locked into the eyes of Jesus! Real connection with the Son of God and God the Son suddenly happened with me serving as His earthly representative!
I saw an image of total forgiveness, fellowship, reconciliation, mutual genuine love, and healing of their entire septuagenarian lives flash from the cornea of their eyes!
They were suddenly—instantaneously—HOME!
They were at CENTER!
They were at the “X marks the spot” on the mall map that says, “YOU ARE HERE!”
I preached the greatest sermon I never preached today in 40 minutes in a chemotherapy clinic in the town where I LIVE!
I preached the greatest sermon I never preached today to an inadvertent, unsuspecting group of some 20 rapt listeners who individually heard JESUS speaking directly to each of their hearts!
When I stood up to begin my departure, one of the nurses of around the age of 50, who was handling one of the men’s treatment and who rarely speaks to me, stood up about a foot away from me, looked me square in the eyes, with tears welling up in hers, and stated with a strong emphasis, “We (meaning the nursing staff) LOVE to hear you older men talking to each other; it’s so different than the way women talk to each other!” I smiled, hugged, thanked, and blessed her real big!
When I was walking out of the building, the guy that had been seated immediately next to me was leaving also and said to me, “I just learned more today (I know he meant about life and God) in the last 40 minutes than I learned my whole life, including my schooling in Catholic schools before graduating high school!” WOW! What a testament to what God did in that seemingly normal conversation.
I am a firsthand witness to what happens when an ordinary man—with feet of clay, a cracked clay pot, whose septuagenarian life is replete with the commonality of many faults, failures, and flat sides, but nevertheless immersed in the Spirit—was used by JESUS to reconcile afresh numerous hearts to their Creator, who when He desired to encapsulate in a single word in two Biblical instances who He is, simply said, “God is LOVE” (1Jn. 4:8,16) and “God is LIGHT” (1 Jn. 1:5)!
Today I was a firsthand witness to the Almighty God, who proclaimed, “I am the Lord thy God who health thee!” (Exo. 15:26), meeting with 20 of God’s beloved creatures gathered in that cloistered room, with some of their number having been violently assaulted with one of Satan’s most dastardly and cruel CURSES—CANCER!
Today I was a firsthand witness to the SUN (SON) of righteousness rising with healing in His wings just as He testified He would:
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” “BUT FOR YOU WHO FEAR MY NAME, THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL RISE WITH HEALING IN ITS WINGS; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. “You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the LORD of hosts. “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. “HE WILL RESTORE THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN AND THE HEARTS OF THE CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS, SO THAT I WILL NOT COME AND SMITE THE LAND WITH A CURSE.” (Mal. 4:1-6; parenthetic emphasis added)
