Guidance & Wisdom
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon.
To pray is the greatest thing we can do: and to do it well there must be calmness, time, and deliberation; otherwise it is degraded into the littlest and meanest of things. True praying has the largest results for good; and poor praying, the least.
Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
Truth unquickened by God’s Spirit deadens as much as, or more than, error.
Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher’s heart into the preacher’s sermon; prayer puts the preacher’s sermon into the preacher’s heart. The heart makes the preacher.
No sham praying was that of Elijah, no mere performance, no spiritless, soulless, official praying.
Praying Samuels come from praying Hannahs.
Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces.
We live shabbily because we pray meanly.
Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life.
The preacher must, by prayer, put God in the sermon. The preacher must, by prayer, move God toward the people before he can move the people to God by his words. The preacher must have had audience and ready access to God before he can have access to the people.
Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.
Morning listlessness is the index to a listless heart.
Almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so.
This divine unction is the feature which separates and distinguishes true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting the truth, and which creates a wide spiritual chasm between the preacher who has it and the one who has it not. It backs and impregnates revealed truth with all the energy of God. Unction is simply putting God in his own word and on his own preachers.
Unction is a thing which you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than worthless.
The real sermon is made in the closet. The man—God’s man—is made in the closet. His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret communion with God.
Professional praying chills and kills both preaching and praying.
God does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty comers and goers.
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