Quotes About Preaching

In his preaching, Christ condemned adulterous behavior, but otherwise said nothing in any of the four Gospels about whom you could love, or how you could love. He said nothing about sex between people of the same gender. He said nothing about the superiority of abstinence over experience, nothing about the who and how of coupling, the timing of when to have children and when to practice birth control, all the forbidden sex later codified in exhaustive detail by celibate men.

it's about speaking with a biblical agenda. If

It is possible to have the administration of the sacraments and the preaching of the Word of God and to have it be simply a human exercise.

As I often point out to folks, today we are not only saved by grace, we are paralyzed by it. We will preach to you for an hour that you can do nothing to be saved, and then sing to you for forty-five minutes trying to get you to do something to be saved. That is confusing, to say the least.

"Brothers, our toil and hardship, we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you."

You will perceive by my preaching that I am growing old: it is the privilege of years, and I am sure you will pardon it from the purity of it's motives.

When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

People don't read their Bibles. They hire pastors to preach to them. And some pastors will preach total nonsense if it will tickle the congregations' ears enough to open their purses... And they'll defend the delusions... indoctrinated in them to the death.

They weren't telling their congregations that what they were preaching was Unitarianism; they were just omitting from their sermons and services anything that conflicted with Unitarianism, with the idea that if their congregations heard nothing that wasn't Unitarian they would just naturally become Unitarians.

If Christ waited to be anointed before He went to preach, no young man ought to preach until he, too, has been anointed by the Holy Ghost. —F. B. MEYER

True preaching is the sweating of blood. —DR. JOSEPH PARKER

You don't teach virtue by preaching virtue. You teach virtue by requiring virtuous behavior, so that virtuous behavior becomes a habit.

In every era and in every culture, warnings abound regarding the errors to which that culture is least prone. In puritanical eras, pastors preach about the dangers of indulging the flesh. In indulgent eras, TV talk show hosts warn about the dangers of puritanism. In an era of "walk tall" and "stand proud," it takes courage to teach humility. And it won't earn you many friends.

If you've never bled, you have no material for preaching. If when you're finished preaching you're not finished, spent, wiped out — if you haven't "given blood" — you haven't really preached.9

1. The Culture Shock of Preaching 1 2. Aiming toward Contextual Preaching 31 3. Exegeting the Congregation 56 4. Preaching as Local Theology 91 5. Preaching as Folk Art

Almost by instinct I began to incorporate more narrative in my preaching, in part because storytelling seemed to be the one communicational mode I could depend upon to cross lines of education and age.

Clearly, therefore, the preaching is an explanation of the healings. On the one hand, the healings — marvelous as they are — do not explain themselves. They could be misinterpreted — as in fact they were by Jesus' enemies, who attributed his healing works to Satanic power. The works by themselves did not communicate the new fact. That had to be stated in plain words: "The kingdom of God has drawn near.

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's presence in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I try to be sensitive to the power of language, to the power of language that God uses to reveal something about what Christ is doing in our time. That is why I'm always excited about preaching, because there is always something new.

A 'real pastor' is not preaching of their own; they are speaking what God put in their heart by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is using them at that very moment to speak to the congregations situations -past, present, and future.

The preaching that ignores the doctrine of Hell lowers the holiness of God and degrades the work of Christ.

If any man will preach as he should preach, his work will take more out of him than any other labor under heaven.

Also, I preached to gangs on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx - and miracles began to happen.

While I was raised around churches and had gotten to know a few preachers fairly well, the thought never entered my head that I would one day stand and deliver. Not only was I not interested, I lived with a major struggle: I stuttered.