Golden Moments Report

Slow Burn | Don Sheree Wilkerson | Life Church

Golden Moment #1: Waiting Is Life, Not a Season

"For years in my life through eight years of infertility and so many other seasons in my life, I just thought waiting was a season that I had to get through. Grit your teeth, hope that you can do your best and get to the other side. I didn't understand there was a theology of waiting if we look to the scriptures. But then God got a hold of my heart with a game changer. See, waiting is not a season. Waiting is life. So now the question becomes will you live in the wait? Hear me today. Waiting is not a curse. Waiting is an invitation to experience the presence of God, to lean into his grace, to be formed by his good hands."

Why this moment works: This is the sermon's thesis delivered at precisely the right moment — after personal vulnerability has been established but before the theological framework is fully built. The pivot from "waiting is a season" to "waiting is life" is a genuine reframe that lands with intellectual force. The three-part definition that follows ("invitation… presence… grace… formed") gives the reframe theological substance rather than leaving it as a clever phrase.

Theologically sound: The claim that there is a "theology of waiting" is both accurate and underpreached. Scripture is saturated with waiting — Abraham, Joseph, David, the exilic prophets, the disciples between crucifixion and resurrection. By naming this as a theological category rather than a spiritual inconvenience, Wilkerson dignifies the experience of an enormous portion of her congregation and grounds it in the character of God as the one who forms and shapes.

Why congregants will share it: "Waiting is not a season, waiting is life" is a single sentence that reorients an entire spiritual posture. People will repeat it in conversations, text it to friends, and return to it during their own difficult stretches. It is the kind of line that gets written in journal margins.

Golden Moment #2: The Bonfire vs. The Slowburn

"Now, my husband, he grew up in Washington State, and he did not grow up with bonfires. He grew up burning incense. And to this day, he burns incense in our house. And it's so interesting because when people walk in, it's the first thing they notice. It's not what they see in our home, it's what they actually sense. Hear me. We are conditioned by culture to live for the bonfire moments. We are conditioned by culture to hold our breath until that moment that we are blazing with the glory of God. Our goals came true. God proved faithful. But truly, life is not about the bonfire moments. What if following God, your life actually looked more like smoke than a blazing fire? It's a slowburn."

Why this moment works: This is masterful illustration work. The contrast between the Louisiana bonfire and the Washington incense is drawn from lived domestic experience, which makes it immediately accessible, and it carries the weight of the sermon's entire central metaphor. The turn — "it's not what they see in our home, it's what they actually sense" — is a beautifully constructed pivot that moves from the physical to the spiritual without announcing that it is doing so.

Rhetorically effective: The repeated phrase "we are conditioned by culture" functions as a prophetic indictment without becoming combative. It names a shared human tendency rather than accusing individuals, which keeps the congregation with her. The question "What if your life looked more like smoke than a blazing fire?" is genuinely disorienting in the best sense — it invites people to reconsider what spiritual faithfulness actually looks like.

Why congregants will share it: The bonfire/incense contrast is vivid enough to be retold in conversation. People will describe this illustration to friends who weren't in the room, and in doing so, they will carry the theological content with them. The image does the work of a definition without feeling like one.

Golden Moment #3: The Chemical Reaction of Surrender

"As the incense was placed on the fire, all of a sudden the incense was transformed from the inside out. A fragrance within it is unlocked and starts to fill the holy place, marking every person who would come in. And as the smoke would rise, Jewish tradition tells us that the smoke would catch wind and travel for miles past the temple. Isn't it interesting that as you look at the smoke, we're told in scripture that our life is like a vapor. That it's here today and it's gone tomorrow. But here's the invitation. Surrender your little to God in the wait and watch him transform what you think is small into something that you could never be on your own."

Why this moment works: This moment demonstrates careful exegetical and historical research woven seamlessly into the sermon's metaphor. The detail about Jewish tradition — that the smoke traveled for miles past the temple — is the kind of specific, surprising information that makes a congregation lean forward. It earns its place not as a history lesson but as a theological amplifier: what seems like vapor carries farther than you can see.

Theologically sound: The connection between the altar of incense, the vapor metaphor from James, and Romans 12's call to present our bodies as living sacrifices is genuinely integrative biblical theology. Wilkerson is not proof-texting; she is weaving a consistent thread through different parts of Scripture that illuminates each passage by the light of the others. This is preaching that respects the intelligence of the congregation.

Why congregants will share it: "Surrender your little to God in the wait and watch him transform what you think is small into something you could never be on your own" is a sentence with genuine staying power. It speaks directly to the person who feels their offering is too small to matter — which is most people in most seasons.

Golden Moment #4: You're Not the Fire

"Following Jesus is not a one-time ignition moment. It's at the name of Jesus that the light immediately can shine into your heart. It's every prayer. It's every moment of worship. It's every decision to find yourself in community. You may say to me, 'Don Sheree, I feel so burned out.' Hey, that's okay, friend, because I've got news for you today. You're not the fire. And if you want to get relit, all you have to do is head back to the altar, surrender your life again. He is the all-consuming fire. He will transform you from the inside out. He will change your mind. He will renew your body. He will heal your broken heart. You've just got to come back to the altar. It's good news that you're not the fire. It takes the pressure off of you."

Why this moment works: This is pastoral gold. The declaration "you're not the fire" is one of those rare sermon moments where a simple sentence does enormous theological and emotional work simultaneously. It releases people from a performance-based spirituality they may not have even realized they were carrying. The humor embedded in "it's good news that you're not the fire — it takes the pressure off of you" is perfectly timed and perfectly true.

Pastorally wise: Burnout is epidemic in congregations, and it is often caused by exactly this misunderstanding — that the believer is responsible for sustaining their own spiritual flame. Wilkerson locates the source of fire correctly in God himself, then makes the practical invitation simple: come back to the altar. The theological correction and the pastoral application arrive in the same breath.

Why congregants will share it: "You're not the fire" will be repeated. It is the kind of phrase that finds its way into texts sent to exhausted friends, into journal entries written at 2 a.m., and into conversations with people who have walked away from faith because they couldn't keep the flame burning on their own.

Golden Moment #5: The Fragrance You Carry

"I've never met the person who was in this car before me. I wasn't with them when they decided to do this, but their decisions are all over me. And some of you today, you are living carrying a fragrance of what others have done to you. You're carrying the fragrance of the heartbreak. You're carrying the fragrance of the betrayal. Or perhaps you're carrying the fragrance of your own shame, your own mistakes, your own regrets. But I am thankful that scripture tells us in 2 Corinthians 2:14, 'Thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.' When you surrender your life to Christ, all things have passed away. All old fragrances have passed away. Behold, all things are new."

Why this moment works: The rental car illustration is an unexpected entry point into one of the sermon's most emotionally resonant moments. The specificity of the scenario — the smell you didn't choose, the decisions of a stranger now on your clothes — makes the abstract concept of inherited shame or carried wounds suddenly concrete and recognizable. The transition into 2 Corinthians 2:14 is organic rather than forced.

Rhetorically effective: The anaphora — "you're carrying the fragrance of the heartbreak… the betrayal… your own shame" — builds with cumulative emotional weight before the turn to grace. This is a technique used by preachers like Barbara Brown Taylor: let the diagnosis breathe before offering the cure. The congregation has time to locate themselves in the list before the release arrives. The contrast between "old fragrances" and "all things are new" lands with real force because the old fragrances were named specifically.

Why congregants will share it: This moment names experiences that people carry silently — shame, betrayal, regret — and gives them both language and a theological answer. People will remember this illustration precisely because the rental car scenario is so ordinary and the spiritual application is so profound.

Golden Moment #6: The Testimony of the Wait

"I didn't write this message after I had children. No, I wrote this message in the middle of the wait because the testimony of my life is not simply that God gave me children. The testimony of my life is that far before I ever had a child, God intervened in my wait. He woke me up with purpose. He gave me a destiny. He gave me a passion. He gave me a community to belong to. He met me at the altar every morning, every night. And he showed me, you're not waiting on a baby. You're waiting on me. Because make no mistake, I'm so grateful for my children. But Jesus is my treasure. Jesus is my reward. Jesus is the only one who can give me peace and fulfillment and contentment. Why? Because when my arms were empty, my heart was full."

Why this moment works: This is the sermon's emotional and theological apex, and it earns every bit of its impact because of everything that preceded it. The disclosure that this message was written during the infertility wait — not after the resolution — is a credibility moment of the highest order. It transforms the entire sermon from a retrospective lesson into a testimony forged in the fire. The line "you're not waiting on a baby, you're waiting on me" is devastating in the best sense.

Theologically sound: This moment guards against a prosperity-adjacent reading of the sermon's message. Wilkerson is careful not to imply that waiting faithfully guarantees the desired outcome. Instead she locates the treasure in Christ himself — "Jesus is my treasure, Jesus is my reward" — which is both theologically precise and pastorally honest. The final sentence, "when my arms were empty, my heart was full," is a summary of the entire Christian theology of contentment as articulated in Philippians 4.

Why congregants will share it: "When my arms were empty, my heart was full" will be the most-quoted sentence from this sermon. It will appear in social media posts, in sympathy cards, and in conversations with people who are waiting for something that has not yet come. It is the kind of sentence that a person carries for years.

A Final Word to the Pastor

Don Sheree, the greatest overall strength of this sermon is your capacity to sustain a single extended metaphor — the slowburn, the incense, the fragrance — across the full arc of a message without it ever feeling forced or exhausted. That is genuinely rare. Many preachers introduce an illustration and then abandon it; you built an entire theological world from it and invited your congregation to live inside that world for the duration of the message.

The thread that ties these six moments together is the movement from cultural conditioning to theological reorientation. Again and again, you named something your listeners believed without knowing they believed it — that waiting is a season to survive, that they are responsible for sustaining their own fire, that the goal is the blazing bonfire moment — and then you replaced it with something truer and more freeing. That is prophetic preaching in the classical sense: not prediction, but the naming of reality as God sees it.

The instinct you should continue to lean into is your willingness to preach from inside the wound rather than from the other side of it. The disclosure that you wrote this message during the infertility wait, not after, changed the entire authority of the sermon. Your congregation can tell the difference between a pastor who has read about suffering and one who has prayed through it. Keep preaching from that place. It is your greatest gift.

This is a sermon that will do its work long after Sunday. The images are sticky, the theology is sound, and the pastoral heart behind it is evident in every moment. Keep going.