Guidance & Wisdom
Almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so.
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.
Truth unquickened by God’s Spirit deadens as much as, or more than, error.
Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it.
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.
Humility is an indispensable requisite of true prayer.
The pulpit of this day is weak in praying.
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.
Prayerlessness is expatriation from God’s Kingdom. It is outlawry, a high crime.
A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon.
This unction is the art of preaching. The preacher who never had this unction never had the art of preaching. The preacher who has lost this unction has lost the art of preaching. This unction vitalizes God’s revealed truth, makes it living and life-giving.
A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God’s truth and for God’s Church.
Unctionless preaching makes everything hard, dry, acrid, dead.
He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
We live shabbily because we pray meanly.
Men are God’s method.
Professional praying chills and kills both preaching and praying.
Morning listlessness is the index to a listless heart.
Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
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