“My heart was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth with arguments” (John Wesley, as quoted in Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 106).
A Word Declared With Power
“Like a hammer it can break stony hearts, and like fire it can burn up rubbish. It illumines our path, shining like a lamp on a dark night, and like a mirror it shows us both what we are and what we should be. It is also likened to seed causing birth, and milk causing …
Anchored and Alive
“When once we have grasped the truth that ‘God still speaks through what he has spoken’, we shall be well protected against two opposite errors. The first is the belief that, though it was heard in ancient times, God’s voice is silent today. The second is the claim that God is indeed speaking today, but …
Alive Right Now
“For we give the impression that he who spoke centuries ago is silent today; and that the only word we can hear from him comes out of a book, a faint echo from the distant past, smelling strongly of the mould of libraries. But no, this is not at all what we believe. Scripture is …
Said and Done
“Other preachers are entirely faithful in their exposition of God’s Word, yet remain dull and academic because they have forgotten that the heart of the Bible is not what God has said, but what he has done for our salvation through Jesus Christ” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 100).
Straight Foundations
“The kind of God we believe in determines the kind of sermons we preach” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 93).
Pulpit Honesty
“The essential secret is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 92).
Failure to Communicate
“The anti-authority mood makes people unwilling to listen, addiction of television makes them unable to do so, and the contemporary atmosphere of doubt makes many preachers both unwilling and unable to speak. Thus there is paralysis at both ends, in the speaking and in the hearing. A dumb preacher with a deaf congregation presents a …
An Important Point of Grammar
“Too many sermons are written ‘in the imperative mode’, whereas the religion of the Bible ‘is written largely in the revealing language of the indicative mode’ . . . The power of the religion of the Bible is to be found in its affirmations” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 57)
Pulpit Words
“Common usage of pulpit words reflects this distortion. ‘To preach’ has come to mean ‘to give advice in an offensive, tedious or obtrusive manner’, while to be ‘sermonic’ is to inflict on someone a patronizing harangue” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 52).