The Joy Of Preaching

Remember when you surrendered to preach? You studied, you prayed, you waited for the phone to ring, and you were thrilled that some church would allow you...lowly you, to step into the pulpit. Then, over time, familiarity with preaching and perhaps pastoring caused you to lose some of the joy of preaching. The spark, at times, kindles within and his word becomes a burning fire in your bones. At other times, you lament the fact that “it's time to get a message together.”

We know we can lose the joy of salvation, but can we also lose the joy of preaching?

“The Joy of Preaching,” by Phillips Brooks, was written in the 19th century but speaks to us today. In blogging these Brooks' quotes, perhaps someone will step into the pulpit Sunday with fire in their bones and with a message from God, not a crafted, lifeless sermon.

“Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it two essential elements, truth and personality.”

“Truth through personality is our real description of preaching. The truth must come really through the person, not merely over his lips...It must come through his character, his affections, his whole intellectual and moral being.”

“There is an immense amount of preaching which must be called preaching about Christ as distinct from preaching Christ.”

“The Gospel you are preaching now is the same Gospel that you preached when you were first ordained...but if you have been a live man all the time, you are not preaching it now as you did then. The truth has not changed, but you have grown to a fuller understanding of it, to a larger capacity of receiving and transmitting it.”

“The noblest ministries in the church are those of old men who have kept the freshness of their youth.”

“If we preach as honestly, as intelligently, and as spiritually as we can, we shall not merely do good in our own day, but help in some real, though unrecorded way, the future triumphs of the work we love.”

“No man preaches well who has not a strong and deep appreciation of humanity. The minister...finds his compensation and strength in knowing man, simply as man, and learning his inestimable worth.”

“A preacher's view of all theology ought to be colored with the preciousness of the human soul.”

“Courage...is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which shall say not what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent. Only remember where the true courage and independence comes from.”

“Preaching...it's highest joy is in the great ambition that is set before it, the glorifying of the Lord and the saving of the souls of men. No other joy on earth compares with that. The ministry that does not feel that joy is dead.”

Preaching.....what an humbling experience. But what a JOY.