The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.
I know what I'll be preaching in the spring, what I'll be preaching in the summer, and what I'll be preaching next fall.
I do now most heartily desire to live but to exalt Jesus; to live preaching and to die preaching; to preach to perishing sinners till I drop down dead.
What do our clergy lose by reading their sermons? They lose preaching, the preaching of the voice in many cases, the preaching of the eye almost always.
Insomnia is an increasing problem. I've become swayed that sleep disorders are conceivably the most unnoticed, ignored, underrated reason of health as well as performance problems in the place of work.
And inasmuch as the great-souled man deserves most, he must be the best of men; for the better a man is the more he deserves, and he that is best deserves most. Therefore the truly great-souled man must be a good man. Indeed greatness in each of the virtues would seem to go with greatness of soul.
Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching.
Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon. He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation's capital.
Shall I give you yet another reason why you should pray? I have preached my very heart out. I could not say any more than I have said. Will not your prayers accomplish that which my preaching fails to do? Is it not likely that the Church has been putting forth its preaching hand but not its praying hand? Oh dear friends! Let us agonize in prayer.
Do not suppose, dearest Sir, that I am so short-sighted as to destroy my life by English preaching, or any other preaching. St. Paul did much good by his preaching, but how much more by his writings.
Ya'll don't hear what I'm preaching. I'm preaching so good I'm about to 'Amen' myself! Oh!...Oh God! I'm preaching good! Hallelujah!
I'm writing with the assumption that most of you who are reading this book have concluded what I have: Preaching doesn't workpreaching, as we know it, is a tragically broken endeavor. The value of our practices-including preaching-ought to be judged by their effects on our communities and the ways in which they help us move toward life with God.
The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.
If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done.
A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call.
Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.