God’s true ministers of the Word have been called to do just that, minister the Word. And since Christ is the incarnate Word of God, their main obligation is to teach and preach Christ. One verse a minister must always keep in mind is Paul’s declaration in his first letter to the Corinthian church when he wrote: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:3) It is so easy for pastors to get sidetracked and start focusing on matters, which although may be of some importance, stray from the basic message of the Bible, which is Christ. I shared this fact recently with our Wednesday Bible study group: When we were in high school we were taught subjects such as Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Physics, etc. Here was the question: Have we ever used at all what we learned from these courses in our actual life? The Word of God cannot be like that. I tell our members often, to the point of boring them, that if the Bible were not relevant or practical, it would be of no benefit whatsoever to us. About the Word of God, (Bible) Paul wrote this in his second letter to Timothy. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16-17 NLT/ New Living Translation) To me, this is like the concept of the old general stores: no matter what you needed they had it. I had this silly thought last week when I finished preparing my message for Sunday: “All my sermons have been sounding the same lately.” After the good response Sunday, I chose to believe it’s because I’ve been faithful in preaching Christ. An old preacher was confronted one day by some church leaders with this question: “When are you going to stop preaching about the love of Christ every Sunday?” He replied: “When you start loving one another.” If the pastor of your church seems to always center his sermons on Christ’s love and salvation, or if his messages always seems to eventually drift back to Jesus, look up to Heaven and thank God for it. God’s word for today: (Acts 8:35) “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.”