The Heart Makes the
Preacher
The heart makes the
preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. 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. 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. .
. .
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?
. . . 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. . . .
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. “
E.M. Bounds (1835-1913), "Power Through
Prayer," From Chapter 12, "Heart Preparation Necessary"
