PREACHING:
NEED FOR FRESHNESS
It would probably be an oversimplification to name any single cause as being alone responsible for the dullness of our preaching, but I nevertheless venture to suggest that one very important factor is our habit of laboring the obvious.…
This engrossment in first principles has an adverse effect upon the evangelical church. It is as if an intelligent child should be forced to stay in the third grade five or six years. The monotony is just too great.…
Our tendency to repeat endlessly a half dozen basic doctrines is the result of our lack of prophetic insight and our failure to meet God in living encounter. The knowledge of God presents a million facets, each one shining with a new ravishing light. The teacher who lives in the heart of God, reads Scriptures with warm devotion, undergoes the discipline and chastisement of the Holy Spirit and presses on toward perfection is sure every now and again to come upon fresh and blessed vistas of truth, old indeed as the Word itself, but bright as the dew on the grass in the morning. The heart that has seen the far glimpses of advanced truth will never be able to keep quiet about them. His experiences will get into his sermons one way or another, and his messages will carry an element of surprise and delight altogether absent from the ordinary Bible talks heard everywhere these days.
Romans 11:33–36; Ephesians 3:8; Ephesians 4:11–13; Hebrews 6:1
The Warfare of the Spirit, 64, 65, 66.