It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it is scary. It is like I understand the parts but not the whole. I intellectually grasp the bits and pieces, perhaps even how it fits into the larger context. But I don’t grasp what to do with it.
If you are a pastor, you have probably experienced the same thing. You can’t quite put words to it, but you’ve got your notes, outline or manuscript and you think it is utterly horrible. You are afraid that if you preach THAT, you’ll soon be out of a job.
I recently had that experience, and people didn’t quite understand. That’s the tough part, most people really can’t understand. Sort of like how only infertile couples get how infertile couples feel every month. It was only after it had happened, again, that I finally understood what it was.
In The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, John Frame talks about cognitive rest, a godly sense of satisfaction. He relates this to the sanctification of the mind (something that Grahame Goldsworthy tackles as well). The Spirit is at work to sanctify our minds such that our thinking is brought more in line with God’s. This is similar to progressive sanctification in which our behavior & character are increasingly brought in line with God’s. Ethical sanctification interacts with the sanctification of our minds: something like the hermenuetical spiral.
“How many seminarians, I often wonder, have the spiritual maturity to warrant the theological decisions they are asked to make in preparation for licensure and ordination?
Theological maturity is often hindered by spiritual maturity. He notes that many doctrinal disputes are due to this kind of spiritual-ethical immaturity. Spiritual immaturity prevents clear perception on the part of one or both of the people engaged in the dispute.
When we lack cognitive rest, we are not yet satisfied with a doctrinal formulation. Or a sermonic formulation. I put it together like this: if I am not yet persuaded by my sermon I can’t expect others to be persuaded. So, when I think a sermon is horrible, lousy or whatever term you want to use, it is not persuading you of something important yet. It is no less true, but it doesn’t seem important, significant. The theological and spiritual import of the text is not yet clear. It is not until that clarity comes that the sermon becomes persuasive. Then the pastor enters the cognitive rest necessary for him to think (however foolishly) that it is a good sermon. He finds it persuasive, not merely accurate.
Cavman Considers 
[…] He then moves into the justification of knowledge, or whether or not we have a right to believe what we believe. He briefly works through the various answers philosophers have provided to this question (rationalism, empiricism and subjectivism in their various forms). He then puts this question through the tri-perspectival grid to help us understand a distinctively Christian and Reformed way to answer this question. Among the many helpful things is the concept of cognitive rest (here I apply this to preaching). […]