Starting Strong: Thriving in the First Years of Preaching
Jun 30, 2026 · 50 min · 12 segments
Send us Fan Mail **Season 2, Episode 1: Hard Seasons in Life with Paul Grimmond** How do you preach to people whose lives are marked by grief…
Paul GrimmondGuestMattHostOllieHostWell, in today's episode, we're thinking about preaching to those in hard seasons and hard times.
When you hear that phrase, hard seasons, hard times, what kind of situations comes to mind for you that church members might be in?
There's the obvious ones, right? So you have those moments of bereavement or grief when someone's lost a family member or someone close to them.
So things like miscarriage and things which people often don't get to share or don't feel comfortable or want to share with others in church, but it's a deep grief that's often held very personally in a very tight space.
So I know that people go through long seasons where they just feel really black about themselves or the world or about God or whatever.
The person who's in a season where they've been looking for work for a while and they've been knocked back three times for a job and they can't find a job and they're starting to wonder, are they competent and can they do stuff properly? And, you know, I mean, just the range of possibilities is pretty massive, isn't it? Yeah.
And what's been your experience in ministry? It's always a bit hard to tell, but...
What kind of percentage do you reckon, if you were to guesstimate, in a church at any one time there might be people going through all sorts of hard times? How common is it, do you think, even whether known or unknown?
I would have thought at any one moment a third to a half of your congregation is in that space.
Which is so much.
I don't know about you guys, but the reality of living in a sinful world is One of the things I've learned about pastoring people over time is that people often show you about 2% of the wholeness of their life, and then occasionally you get this glimpse of all the other stuff that people are dealing with.
What does it mean to persevere and love Jesus when there's mess that's out of your control that you can't do anything about? I think lots of people live with grief at different levels a lot of the time.
With that in mind, and from a Reformed biblical perspective, how does preaching play a part? Is it central, or how does it play with play out with disoriented or grieving or
I want to say lots of things about that actually, but just stop me when we kind of...
I mean, well, one of the things that strikes me is I think suffering in the scriptures is a kind of crucible, right? It's a place that tests and refines, but it's also a place that reveals a lack of faith as well, right? So I do think that when you're in that space, it's a space that you will either grow through or it can actually sometimes be quite, can white ant or really kind of eat out your faith.
It's the moment when people will start asking questions and um that will send them down a rabbit hole that might actually lead in really unhealthy directions or it's a time when people really cling to the truths of what god has done for us in christ love his sovereignty and goodness even though they can't see or experience that really and they'll persevere and you'll see this kind of growth in in who they are and character and stamina so i think it's it's a moment that god is using to shape and mold people But my fundamental conviction is that what shapes and molds people is the spirit at work through the Word.
But I think we need to remember when you're in that space, you're often not thinking super clearly or rationally.
Well, in today's episode, we're thinking about preaching to those in hard seasons and hard times.
When you hear that phrase, hard seasons, hard times, what kind of situations comes to mind for you that church members might be in?
There's the obvious ones, right? So you have those moments of bereavement or grief when someone's lost a family member or someone close to them.
So things like miscarriage and things which people often don't get to share or don't feel comfortable or want to share with others in church, but it's a deep grief that's often held very personally in a very tight space.
So I know that people go through long seasons where they just feel really black about themselves or the world or about God or whatever.
The person who's in a season where they've been looking for work for a while and they've been knocked back three times for a job and they can't find a job and they're starting to wonder, are they competent and can they do stuff properly? And, you know, I mean, just the range of possibilities is pretty massive, isn't it? Yeah.
And what's been your experience in ministry? It's always a bit hard to tell, but...
What kind of percentage do you reckon, if you were to guesstimate, in a church at any one time there might be people going through all sorts of hard times? How common is it, do you think, even whether known or unknown?
I would have thought at any one moment a third to a half of your congregation is in that space.
Which is so much.
I don't know about you guys, but the reality of living in a sinful world is One of the things I've learned about pastoring people over time is that people often show you about 2% of the wholeness of their life, and then occasionally you get this glimpse of all the other stuff that people are dealing with.
What does it mean to persevere and love Jesus when there's mess that's out of your control that you can't do anything about? I think lots of people live with grief at different levels a lot of the time.
With that in mind, and from a Reformed biblical perspective, how does preaching play a part? Is it central, or how does it play with play out with disoriented or grieving or
I want to say lots of things about that actually, but just stop me when we kind of...
I mean, well, one of the things that strikes me is I think suffering in the scriptures is a kind of crucible, right? It's a place that tests and refines, but it's also a place that reveals a lack of faith as well, right? So I do think that when you're in that space, it's a space that you will either grow through or it can actually sometimes be quite, can white ant or really kind of eat out your faith.
It's the moment when people will start asking questions and um that will send them down a rabbit hole that might actually lead in really unhealthy directions or it's a time when people really cling to the truths of what god has done for us in christ love his sovereignty and goodness even though they can't see or experience that really and they'll persevere and you'll see this kind of growth in in who they are and character and stamina so i think it's it's a moment that god is using to shape and mold people But my fundamental conviction is that what shapes and molds people is the spirit at work through the Word.
But I think we need to remember when you're in that space, you're often not thinking super clearly or rationally.
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