On Preaching

I began reading "Power Through Prayer", by E.M.Bounds again this morning. Within three pages I remembered why this book is so powerful. Here are some quotes that have to do with preparing to preach:

The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.

The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless,

that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwasted flow.

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The man makes the preacher. God must make the man.

The messenger is, if possible, more than the message.

The preacher is more than the sermon.

As the life-giving milk from the mother's bosom is but the mother's life,

so all the preacher says is tinctured, impregnated by what the preacher IS.

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It takes twenty years to make a sermon because it takes twenty years to make the man.

The true sermon is a thing of life.

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The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man.

Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill.

Everything depends upon the spiritual character of the preacher.

Under the Jewish dispensation the high priest had

inscribed in jeweled letters on a golden frontlet:

"Holiness to the Lord."

So every preacher in Christ's ministry must be molded into and mastered by

this same holy motto.

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The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves.

It has no self-propogating power.

It moves as men who have charge of it move.

The preacher must impersonate the gospel

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This morning I rededicated myself to frevent prayer for the work of the gospel that is being done, and will be done, by my children and their spouses. I began praying for the way to be prepared for present and future ministry, and for the path before them to be clear and bright so they know the way to go.

God bless the next generation.