Preaching with Purpose: The Urgent Task of Homiletics (Jay Adams Library)

by Jay E. Adams

First of all, the Bible says nothing about the need for a good self-image. It certainly doesn’t condition our ability to obey God on a sense of self-worth! And nowhere are we even commanded to improve our self-image. None of this is scriptural.

The more he recognizes the enormous disparity that exists between his realized position in Christ and his largely unrealized potential in daily living, the more he should repent. In

The self is to be “denied” and “lost.” In that way alone—not by the pursuit of a good self-image—will the self ultimately be found.

There are four principal factors that converge as joint carriers of the preacher’s message: language, order, voice, and body.

Delivery will take care of itself to a great extent when you allow yourself to feel, or experience, the emotional impact of what the content is teaching. When you are willing to relive the event about which you are speaking, or prelive it in your imagination if it is something not previously experienced, rather than reporting (or pre-reporting) it, you will find that delivery follows and flows from content very naturally.