Spend your best time studying Scripture, not unnecessarily surfing through newspapers and magazines, by reading our weekly News That Illustrates.

In an inspiring Christmas sermon from Luke 2:1-14, David Daniels says Christmas reminds us that Jesus provides the answers to all our fears: Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Steve Mathewson writes, "Fred Craddock's first opportunity to preach a sermon had been such a dismal failure that he felt he had no future in the pulpit." Learn more about author Fred Craddock's call to preach in Steve's review of the preaching autobiography 'Reflections on My Call to Preach.' Reading Craddock can help you better understand your own call.

If you haven't tagged any keywords yet in the new My Alerts feature on PreachingToday.com, you don't know what a whiz-bang tool you are missing. For example, I recently tagged the word Christmas for an alert. As a result, on Tuesday an email arrived in my inbox listing three new illustrations and one new sermon posted this week on our site that bear the keyword Christmas.

Talk about convenient! Are you preaching on prayer or revival in January, on the cross in March or April? Tag those keywords now with an alert, and if we add anything new to our database on that topic, you'll know it. This saves you from having to check back each week to see if we've added any new content on a topic for which you've already searched our archives. It also keeps you abreast of our freshest material on any topic.

Here's how to give My Alerts a try. On the main menu, select "Find sermon illustrations," then "Browse topics." In the "All Topics" area in the upper left of the main white area on the page, select the letter "c" in the alphabet list beneath the selection field, then next to the word "Christmas" click on the icon of the folder with a plus sign. Select "create an alert" from the drop-down list. You're done!

Preaching Christ,

Brian Larson
Editor, PreachingToday.com
blarson@christianitytoday.com

Craig Brian Larson is the pastor of Lake Shore Church in Chicago and author and editor of numerous books, including The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching (Zondervan). He blogs on Knowing God and His Ways at craigbrianlarson.com.