Prayer is life passionately wanting, wishing, desiring God’s triumph. Prayer is life striving and toiling everywhere and always for that ultimate victory.
No one statement wrested from its context is a sufficient warrant for actions that plainly controvert other commands. How excellent a thing it would be if the whole Church of Christ had learned that no law of life may be based upon an isolated text. Every false teacher who has divided the Church, has had, "it is written" on which to hang his doctrine.
Seeing is not believing. Seeing is seeing. Believing is being confident without seeing.
The preacher comes with good news; but he does not come with something to be trifled with. His message has an insistent demand, because he comes from a King.
Preaching, Baker, 1974, p. 13.
I am not arguing for mere excitement. Painted fire never burns, and an imitated enthusiasm is the most empty thing that can possibly exist in a preacher. Given the preacher with a message…I cannot understand that man not being swept sometimes right out of himself by the fire and and force and the fervency of his work.
Preaching, Baker, 1974, p. 36.
How would you like to live with somebody who was everlastingly grieving your heart by his conduct?
Nothing is more needed among preachers today than that we should have the courage to shake ourselves free from the thousand and one trivialities in which we are asked to waste our time and strength, and resolutely return to the apostolic ideal which made necessary the office of the pastorate. (We must resolve that) we will continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the Word.
When amusement is necessary to get people to listen to the gospel there will be failure. This is not the method of Christ. To form an organization and provide all kinds of entertainment for young people, in order that they may come to the Bible classes, is to be foredoomed to failure.
There is a tale told of that great English actor Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: “I wish you would explain to me something.” “Well, what is it? I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher.” “What is the reason for the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all.” Macready’s answer was this: “This is quite simple. I can tell you the difference between us. I present my fiction as though it were truth; you present your truth as though it were fiction.”
Waiting for God means power to do nothing save under command. This is not lack of power to do anything. Waiting for God needs strength rather than weakness. It is power to do nothing. It is the strength that holds strength in check. It is the strength that prevents the blundering activity which is entirely false and will make true activity impossible when the definite command comes.
Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given.
We cannot organize revival, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from Heaven when God chooses to blow upon His people once again.
The supreme thing is worship. The attitude of worship is the attitude of a subject bent before the King. The fundamental thought is that of prostration, of bowing down.
The Church of God apart from the Person of Christ is a useless structure. However ornate it may be in its organization, however perfect in all its arrangements, however rich and increased with goods, if the Church is not revealing the Person, lifting Him to the height where all men can see Him, then the Church becomes an impertinence and a sham, a blasphemy and a fraud, and the sooner the world is rid of it, the better.
Holiness is not freedom from temptation, but power to overcome temptation.
The three essentials for great preaching are: truth, clarity, and passion.
To call a man evangelical who is not evangelistic is an utter contradiction.
If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you’re serving in the wrong place.
God seeks and values the gifts we bring Him – gifts of praise, thanksgiving, service, and material offerings. In all such giving at the altar we enter into the highest experiences of fellowship. But the gift is acceptable to God in the measure to which the one who offers it is in fellowship with Him in character and conduct; and the test of this is in our relationships with our fellow men. We are thus charged to postpone giving to God until right relationships are established with others. Could the neglect of this be the explanation of the barrenness of our worship? (Matt. 5:24)