“Earnestness goes one step beyond sincerity. To be sincere is to mean what we say and to do what we say; to be earnest is also to feel what we say. Earnestness is the deep feeling essential to preaching.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 80
Like a Wet Rope
“The number of compelling human interest stories had plummeted, and the number of twenty-four hour cable news channels had not plummeted. No news, no interesting wars, and no celebrity meltdowns were to be had anywhere. Slow news days dragged slow news weeks after them like a wet rope, and producers of news programs were starting to get desperate.”
Flags Out Front, p. 7
And That Opposition Will Give Reasons Why This Quote Doesn’t Apply to You
“One of the chief proofs of genuineness is the willingness to suffer for what we believe. The faithfulness of the true servant of God is proved when opposition comes.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 79
An Aquifer of Moxie
“But President Collins had himself some hidden reserves, an aquifer of moxie far beneath the deepest wells he had ever had to use. But even he didn’t know about any of that, and I am running ahead. All the writers’ workshops say not to do that, and especially not in the third paragraph.”
Flags Out Front, p. 2
A Little Canticles Pun
“She pushed against his chest, a little halfheartedly, and sat up. ‘Do you like my hair like this?’ ‘I love it when you wear it up like that,’ he said earnestly. ‘Your barrettes are twin fawns grazing among the lilies.’”
He Really Does
“We are told that a friend once met the philosopher David Hume (who rejected Christianity) hurrying along a London street and asked him where he was going. Hume replied that he was going to hear George Whitefield preach. ‘But surely,’ his friend asked in astonishment, ‘you don’t believe what Whitefield preaches, do you?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ answered Hume, ‘but he does.’”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 79
Nothing Whatever
“John sat there for a moment, scratching his beard, trying to look both judicious and wise. You and me both, sister, he was thinking. But pastors don’t have the option of saying things like ‘This particular sin has me by the throat too. Nothing whatever can be done about it. Go away.”
Like Speaking Better Than You Live
“Although teaching is a spiritual gift and a great privilege, it brings with it many dangers”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 78
Books to Discard
“But when it finally happened to her, the whole thing was far more illuminating than she had thought it would be and went all the way back to her girlhood. Vanity, selfishness, conceit, superficiality, covetousness, ambition—all of them tumbled off the top bookshelf of her mind and were just lying there on the floor, waiting for someone to pick them all up and throw them away.”
Fire in the Bones
“The pressure should begin to build inside us, until we feel we can contain it no longer. It is then that we are ready to preach. The whole process of sermon preparation, from beginning to end, was excellently summed up by an African American preacher who said, ‘First, I reads myself full, next I thinks myself clear, next I prays myself hot, and then I lets go.’”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 73