12.
Heart Preparation
Necessary
For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart or pierces
the conscience but what comes from a living conscience.
-William
Penn
In the morning I was more engaged in preparing the head than the
heart. This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt the
evil of it especially in prayer. Reform it then, O Lord! Enlarge my
heart and I shall preach.
-Robert Murray McCheyne
A sermon
that has more head infused into it than heart will not be borne home with
efficacy to the hearers.
-Richard Cecil
How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the
preacher in so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great
value is, it helps his heart.
Prayer, with its manifold and many-sided forces, helps the mouth to
utter the truth in its fullness and freedom. The preacher is to be
prayed for, the preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is to
be prayed for; his mouth is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy
mouth is made by praying, by much praying; a brave mouth is made by
praying, by much praying. The Church and the world, God and heaven, owe
much to Paul's mouth; Paul's mouth owed its power to prayer.
How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the
preacher in so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great
value is, it helps his heart.
...it
is the good shepherd with the good shepherd's heart who will bless the
sheep...
Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the
preacher's heart into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's
sermon into the preacher's heart.
The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great
preachers. Men of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare.
The hireling and the stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it
is the good shepherd with the good shepherd's heart who will bless the
sheep and answer the full measure of the shepherd's place.
A prepared heart is much
better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared
sermon.
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the
important thing to be prepared -- the heart. A prepared heart is much
better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared
sermon.
Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of
sermon-making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this
scaffolding is the building. The young preacher has been taught to lay
out all his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a
mechanical and intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a
vicious taste among the people and raised the clamor for talent instead
of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation,
reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness. By it we have lost the
true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost pungent conviction
for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian character, lost
the authority over consciences and lives which always results from
genuine preaching.
...not lack of knowledge but
lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect...
It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do
not study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the
right way to show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack
is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but
lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect -- not that we know too
much, but that we do not meditate on God and his word and watch and fast
and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching.
Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts nonconductors;
arrested, they fall shorn and powerless.
Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of
Him who made himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a
servant? Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of
him who was meek and lowly? Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish,
hard, worldly man preach the system which teems with long-suffering,
self-denial, tenderness, which imperatively demands separation from
enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can the hireling official,
heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel which demands the shepherd to
give his life for the sheep?
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to
the divine and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the
apostles. It was this which gave Wesley his power...
Can the covetous man, who counts salary and
money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and can say in
the spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley: "I count it
dung and dross; I trample it under my feet; I (yet not I, but the grace
of God in me) esteem it just as the mire of the streets, I desire it
not, I seek it not?" God's revelation does not need the light of
human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy
of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but
it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a
child's heart.
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to
the divine and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the
apostles. It was this which gave Wesley his power and radicated his
labors in the history of humanity. This gave to Loyola the strength to
arrest the retreating forces of Catholicism.
Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom:
"He who has prayed well has studied well."
Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom:
"He who has prayed well has studied well." We do not say that
men are not to think and use their intellects; but he will use his
intellect best who cultivates his heart most. We do not say that
preachers should not be students; but we do say that their great study
should be the Bible, and he studies the Bible best who has kept his
heart with diligence. We do not say that the preacher should not know
men, but he will be the greater adept in human nature who has fathomed
the depths and intricacies of his own heart.
We do say that while the
channel of preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may
broaden and deepen the channel, but if you do not look well to the
purity and depth of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted
channel. We do say that almost any man of common intelligence has sense
enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so. We
do say that he who has struggled with his own heart and conquered it;
who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy,
courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained,
through a manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel
on the consciences of his hearers -- such a one will be the truest, most
successful preacher in the esteem of his Lord.
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Copyright © 2002 S.G.P. All rights reserved.
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