Preaching

December 2, 2011

The scholar has a vitally important task to perform within a carefully prescribed precinct. His task is to guarantee the purity of the text, to get as close as possible to the Word as originally given. He may compare Scripture with Scripture until he has discovered the true meaning of the text. But right there his authority ends. He must never sit in judgment upon what is written. He dare not bring the meaning of the Word before the bar of his reason. He dare not commend or condemn the Word as reasonable or unreasonable, scientific or unscientific. After the meaning is discovered, that meaning judges him; never does he judge it.

– AW Tozer –
from The Knowledge of the Holy, 20

November 30, 2011

We Christians are debtors to all men at all times in all places. Men are blind—we must lead them. Men are bound—we must free them. Sinful men are spiritually diseased—we must heal them. Godless men are dead—we must raise them from the dead by the Holy Spirit’s power.

– Leonard Ravenhill –

November 27, 2011

If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

– C. S. Lewis –
Mere Christianity

November 25, 2011

No one can lead farther than he himself has gone.

– A. W. Tozer –

October 12, 2011

Recognizing and admitting sin is not enough – Revival must result in Reform – or it is merely the expression of enthusiasm.

– Arthur Wallis –

July 24, 2011

I tremble for those who are preaching the truth – the truth as it is in Jesus, the gospel in its simplicity, in its purity, in its fullness – but preaching it “in persuasive words of wisdom” and not “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2.4), preaching it in the energy of the flesh and not in the power of the Holy Spirit.  There is nothing more deadly than the gospel without the Spirit’s power.

– RA Torrey –
from The Baptism with the Holy Spirit, 35-36

June 28, 2011

We preachers have the most serious job in the world.  It’s not to be popular, not to be nice.  It’s to get people to step out of darkness into the light.  Life is short.  Eternity is long.

– Leonard Ravenhill –

June 7, 2011

Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.

–  Jim Elliot –

June 5, 2011

If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is un-obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.

– Arthur T. Pierson –