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The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it.
he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world.
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.
The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men.
The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher.
The man makes the preacher. God must make the man.
The messenger is, if possible, more than the message.
all the preacher says is tinctured, impregnated by what the preacher is.
Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the out flow of a life.
The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man.
Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher.
The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves. It has no self-propagating power. It moves as the men who have charge of it move.
The energy of self-denial must be his being, his heart and blood and bones.
The preacher’s sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself.
It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God—men
The preaching man is to be the praying man. Prayer is the preacher’s mightiest weapon. An almighty force in itself, it gives life and force to all.
The man—God’s man—is made in the closet.
His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret...
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Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
Preaching is God’s great institution for the planting and maturing of spiritual life.
The true ministry is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made.
The preaching that kills is the letter; shapely and orderly it may be, but it is the letter still, the dry, husky letter, the empty, bald shell.
This letter-preaching has the truth. But even divine truth has no life-giving energy alone; it must be energized by the Spirit, with all God’s forces at its back.
Truth unquickened by God’s Spirit deadens as much as, or more than, error.
There may be no discount on his orthodoxy, honesty, cleanness, or earnestness; but somehow the man, the inner man, in its secret places has never broken down and surrendered to God, his inner life is not a great highway for the transmission of God’s message, God’s power.
Life-giving preaching costs the preacher much—death to self, crucifixion to the world, the travail of his own soul. Crucified preaching only can give life. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.
Letter-preaching may be eloquent, enameled with poetry and rhetoric, sprinkled with prayer spiced with sensation, illumined by genius and yet these be but the massive or chaste, costly mountings, the rare and beautiful flowers which coffin the corpse.
This letter-preaching deals with the surface and shadow of things, and not the things themselves.
has no deep insight into, no strong grasp of, the hidden life of God’s Word.
Preaching which kills is prayerless
preaching.
Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in pray...
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Death-dealing prayers they are. Every vestige of devotion has perished under their breath.
The deader they are the longer they grow.
A school to teach preachers how to pray, as God counts praying, would be more beneficial to true piety, true worship, and true preaching than all theological schools.
Our being with God is of use only as we expend its priceless benefits on men.
Preachers who are great thinkers, great students must be the greatest of prayers, or else they will be the greatest of backsliders, heartless professionals, rationalistic, less than the least of preachers in God’s estimate.
What the preacher is in prayer to God, for himself, for his people, so is his power for real good to men, so is his true fruitfulness, his true fidelity to God, to man, for time, for eternity.
It is impossible for the preacher to keep
his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling ...
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The scientist loses God in nature. The preacher may lose God in his sermon.
He prays more than ordinary Christians, else he were disqualified for the office he has undertaken.
All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared with our closets.
It does not mean the closet absorbed in the study or swallowed up in the activities of ministerial duties; but it means the closet first, the study and activities second,
both study and activities freshened and made efficient by the closet.
Prayer that affects one’s ministry must give ton...
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The prayer that makes much of our preaching must be made much of.
The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching.
Light praying will make light preaching. Prayer makes preaching strong, gives it unc...
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In the school of prayer only can the heart learn to preach.
