Guidance & Wisdom
Unction is a thing which you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than worthless.
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.
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.
Almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so.
A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon.
Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
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.
Unctionless preaching makes everything hard, dry, acrid, dead.
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.
A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God’s truth and for God’s Church.
Professional praying chills and kills both preaching and praying.
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 learning can make up for the failure to pray.
Morning listlessness is the index to a listless heart.
None but praying leaders can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews.
The pulpit of this day is weak in praying.
God does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty comers and goers.
Without this unction on the preacher the gospel has no more power to propagate itself than any other system of truth.
Truth unquickened by God’s Spirit deadens as much as, or more than, error.
MannaScroll