A Quote by Henri Nouwen

Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his 'being different' gets in the way.

Henri Nouwen

Quote Topics

Air Artist Attention Being Being Different Circus Costume Different Draw Gets God Himself His Instead Just Leaves Listen People Preacher Sensational Senses Spirit Through Tumbling Untouched Uses Watch Way Word Word Of God

Quote Author

Henri Nouwen
Dutch - Priest
January 24, 1932 - September 21, 1996

People are drawn to preaching that is passionate and offered with conviction. Passion comes when the preacher has spent significant time with the text, and when God has spoken through the text in a way that addresses the preacher's life first.

Adam Hamilton

The work of the preacher resembles that of the sower. Like the sower, the preacher must sow good seed, the Word of God.

J. C. Ryle

Holy men of old were moved upon by the Holy Spirit and the revelation given to them is God's Word in the Holy Scriptures. Is God speaking any less today through holy men called of God to bring a message through revelation to this generation? ... We wave our Bibles and cry, 'This is the Word of' God.' Indeed it is God's Word, but the Holy Spirit yet brings revelation to this generation today that is no less God's Word... The prophet is not a method that God uses; but in fact is the only method he uses to speak to this generation.

Earl Paulk

The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.

Edward McKendree Bounds

I lived in a project and...didn't have a good education. But...I'd listen to the preacher, who said that God would show me the way. Everything starts from that confidence.

Evander Holyfield

It is that the Spirit is the outbreathing of God, His inmost life going forth in a personal form to quicken. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive the inmost life of God Himself to dwell in a personal way in us. When we really grasp this thought, it is overwhelming in its solemnity. Just stop and think what it means to have the inmost life of that infinite and eternal Being whom we call God, dwelling in a personal way in you. How solemn and how awful and yet unspeakably glorious life becomes when we realize this.

R. A. Torrey

I'm standing under a sign that says, 'Budweiser is king of beers,' and everybody's got their beers here today," I told them. "But I'm here to talk about the King of Kings. I know I might look like a preacher, but I'm not. Here's how you can tell whether someone's a preacher or not: if he gets up and says some words and passes a hat for you to put money in, that's a preacher. This is free. This if free of charge, which proves I'm not a preacher.

Phil Robertson

This was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal 'idea' in God, should 'become' God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.

Bede Griffiths

My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I'm very 'preacher-ish' on stage, not by intent but because that's where I learned to talk in front of people.

Ron White

Preacher to me: 'A dollar for the Lord, brother?' Me to preacher: 'That's all right, I'm headed his way. I'll give it to him when I see him.'

Edward Abbey

How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when his sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified, and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.

Edward McKendree Bounds

I have many times essayed thoroughly to investigate the ten commandments, but at the very outset, "I am the Lord thy God," I stuck fast; that very one word, I, put me to a non-plus. He that has but one word of God before him, and out of that word cannot make a sermon, can never be a preacher.

Martin Luther

Preaching is effective as long as the preacher expects something to happen-not because of the sermon, not even because of the preacher, but because of God.

John Hines

If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: "teaching" God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.