“Don’t block the glory of the cross by your bitterness.”

“We do not determine the meaning of the text, but rather discover it.”

“It’s not that I’m a great preacher, I’m not, but it’s that God is a great God.”

“After we convert someone, they need two things: a job and a friend.”

“When you push yourself to your limits, then your limits are changed.”

“We have plenty of office managers who call themselves preachers. What we need is men with a fire in their bones and the gospel in their hearts such that they can’t not preach.”

“We’re dealing with a message that is life-changing, but also life-giving.”

“Burnout happens when we forget where our strength comes from.”

“Every sermon should be able to state in one sentence what step people need to take to move closer to God.”

“In a world where we are accused of always being angry, it is important that we are not. But that we are a confident people, with a clear voice, and certain message.”

“It’s not about how much you know, but about how much you’re willing to learn.”

“Ministers must pursue the compassion of Jesus. Compassion is your pain in my heart.”

“I look like I’m going to die in the gym so that I don’t die on the mountain.. “What will God show us if we endure?”

“You are a human being. You are not a super-human being. Watch your habits.”

“Burnout happens when we forget where our strength comes from. Trust God that He knows what He is doing. You can’t move an iceberg by ramming your boat into it. Constant gentle pressure moves things.”

“Effective preaching helps people get from Point A to Point B.”

“We must be authentic. We must be genuine. NOT PERFECT. (I Timothy 4:12)”

“Preachers! Don’t bore people to distraction. Don’t neglect doctrine. (Hos. 4:6) The pulpit should sound forth clear teaching on the doctrines of the Bible.”

“The reason people leave the church is because they are in pain and no one seems to care.”

“The minister’s spiritual relationship with God is ALWAYS first!
You cannot lead your family spiritually where you are not willing to go. (Eph. 5:21-23; I Timothy 5-7)”

“Sometimes when you serve the Lord, you just have to take it!”

“ I cannot preach on hell unless I preach with tears.”

“ Preach from the rights of God rather than the needs of man.”

“ Whatever subject I preach, I do not stop until I reach the Savior, the Lord Jesus, for in Him are all things.”

“If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to be unpopular, preach holiness.”

“Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two: your life preaches all week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourself to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words, from God.”

“I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world’s heart for two thousand years.”

“ I would have every minister of the Gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend, with the generous energy of a father, and with the exuberant affection of a mother.”

“Don’t bore people to the point of distraction.”

“A Preacher who’s not in tune with the fact that he also puts on pants one leg at a time will soon be so disconnected from everyone else that he’ll not be able to afford his own pants.”

“The preacher is not a chef; he’s a waiter. God doesn’t want you to make the meal; He just wants you to deliver it to the table without messing it up. That’s all.”

“I have been stoned, beaten with green walnuts, and with eggs. I have had dynamite put under the pulpit while I was preaching. I have had to be guarded while I preached. I have had them to threaten to take me out of the pulpit and ‘fix’ me so I would never be able to get into another one. I have had them threaten to hang me. I have suffered all of these for the cause of our Lord, and yet have not begun to suffer what our Lord suffered. Or the apostles. I am now 68 years old, and want to preach for many more years. To God be all the glory for the great Victory!”

“To be in the service of others with men that I respect like you all—I shouldn’t have to ask for more than that. ”

“The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake.”

“Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.”

“A preacher who never realizes his own need for forgiveness can never preach with passion and vigor in an effort to explain to the listener why they need it. ”

“The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying not, ‘What a lovely sermon,’ but, ‘I will do something!’ ”

“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”

“If I had only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against pride. ”

“If you preach the gospel in all aspects with the exception of the issues which deal specifically with your time, you are not preaching the gospel at all.”

“A preacher who never admits his own struggle with sin, does not have the ability to be empathetic with other sinners who struggle with sin.”

“In 1877, Charles H. Spurgeon wrote to his son offering advice for ministry faithfulness:
“Give them the Gospel. Study all you can, preach boldly and let your behavior be with great discretion. Live to Him, and you will be better than great.””

“Jesus was not up all night preparing a sermon. He was up all night communing with His Father. Out of that came a sermon.”

“Preach the gospel to yourself every day.”

“If you want to meet the needs of the poor in this world, there is no better place to start than by preaching the Gospel.”

“Ministers often preach about the Gospel instead of preaching the Gospel. They often preach about sinners instead of preaching to them.”

“There is a moral and spiritual war for the souls of Americans. And this war must be waged by preaching the Gospel, prayer, and obedience to God’s Word.”

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

“Your love for preaching isn’t important. What’s important is whether you love the people to whom you’re preaching.”

“There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that Jesus ever separated theology from ethics, or that if you remove His theology - His beliefs about God and judgment, future woe for the wicked and future blessedness for the good - you can leave His ethical teaching intact.”

“The paradox of the pulpit is that its occupant is a sinner whose chief right to be there is his perpetual sense that he has no right to be there, and is there only by grace and always under the spotlight of divine judgment.” = A. C. Craig (from a series of lectures entitled “Preaching in a Scientific Age” in 1953, published in a book by the same title the next year)”

“LISTEN, with the heart of the Savior, to the cries of mercy.
OBSERVE, with eyes being opened by the Spirit, to their needs.
And then, only then, SPEAK a message from the Word of God to strengthen their hearts and calm their spirits.”

“If you are a preacher, don’t ever forget you are a man of God.”

“When we preach or teach the Scriptures, we open the door for the Holy Spirit to do His work. God has not promised to bless oratory or clever preaching. He has promised to bless His Word.”

“The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn’t hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.”

“A man who first tried to guess ‘what the public wants,’ and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave.”

“Do we spend more time preparing a sermon than preparing self? We need to weep.”

“A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.”

“What is preaching? It is proclamation, not just moralizing. It is Good News, not just good advice; it is gospel, not just law. Supremely, it is about God and what he has done, not just about us and about what we ought to do.”

“Preach what you practice”

“The expository preacher is not one who ‘shares his studies’ with others, he is an ambassador and a messenger authoritatively delivering the Word of God to men.”

“The waters of good preaching are always running downhill to the stream of Christ, who He is, and how He has loved us.”

“Building anticipation into one’s preaching simply calls for one basic understanding of the task of the pulpit: the goal is not to get something said but to get something heard.”

“When I preach—no matter where it is in the world—I can always count on five areas of human need that afflict all peoples. Emptiness, loneliness, guilt, fear of death, deep-seated insecurity.”

“We are not trying to determine what scripture says but trying to discover what it means…Meaning - has been put there by God that is unchanging and relevant for every generation.”

“GOD HAS THE ANSWERS FOR EVERYTHING THAT WE FACE…BUT DO OUR SERMONS?”

“I’m not going to cry over anything that can’t cry over me.”

“Don’t be hypocritical - we earn the right to speak on Sunday three ways…by study…by service…by sincerity.”

“Let people know how much God loves them. There is no power on earth like the love of God.”

“If service is beneath you, then leadership is beyond you.”

“We’ve got to quit apologizing for biblical doctrine. We are not changing the Bible for your opinion and predilections.”

“You earn the right to speak by three things; Study, Service, and Sincerity.”

“The core of how we help people remain true to the Word of God is that we preach a message that is anchored in the Word of God…is that we be people who do not get up and deliver prepared religious talks…and instead, we stand up and share a God touched piece of our own soul.”

“The world must look more like The Church, rather than The Church looking like the world!”

“Don’t ever believe your press clipping. You are not the best ever nor the worst every, don’t believe the press clippings...Instead ask how can I get past people’s defenses to help them see Jesus.”

“[Preaching is] a manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the Written Word, by the Spoken Word. [It is] a most solemn act of worship, in which the thing given – the Gospel of the Son of God – overshadows and even transfigures the preacher by whom it is declared.”

“Things can get rough sometimes. Maybe we need a name tag we put in our wallet or pocket to remind ourselves on our worst days: ‘I am a man of God’ ”

“From The Rookie: Jim Morris, the rookie, is played by Dennis Quaid. He’s had a rough year and has finally come around back to the love of the game. Before the game, he’s smiling and his manager asks him why. He answers: ‘You know what we get to do today, Brooks? We get to play baseball.’ Brother, you know what we get to do Sunday? You get to preach!”

“It is a myth to think that because I’m somebody famous or well-known or because I’m slick or clever, or because I package my little presentation in lingo and terminology that’s kind of at the core of contemporary vernacular that somehow this influences people. You know what gets people saved? Not that kind of influence. What gets people saved is a recognition of who Jesus Christ is and an honest evaluation of their condition and the need for the Savior. What we need is not more people trying to influence society. We need more people preaching the gospel. It’s confrontation, not influence.”

“What we do matters. Our ‘profession’ makes an enormous difference. Doctors, home builders, engineers, nurses, counselors, police officers etc. in most cases are making the world a better place, but in ministry we are privileged to offer the world true peace, and an abundant life. Ministry is joyous, exciting and meaningful because we are not only blessed to be servants of the Most High God, but we are also affecting lives for ALL eternity.”

““Don’t preach to make friends or so we will be loved—don’t do that. Preach so God will be loved and souls will be saved.” —Marshall Keeble
I have this quote taped on my filing cabinet. I’ve had it for several years.”

“Ministry is this much about preparedness as it is passion. The slopes of Mount Everest are littered with the bodies of men who were highly motivated.”

“For years, I kept the following reminder of preaching’s purpose on a notecard under the plastic cover of my desk pad: ‘Preaching the gospel is not delivering edifying discourses, beautifully put together. It is bearing witness to what God has done in Christ for man’s salvation.’”

“It is more important to influence people than to impress them.”

“The great temptation is to believe that your ministry is your gift to God, even your sacrifice. It is not. Your ministry is God’s gift to you.”

“Gospel preaching is not telling people off! It is telling people!”

“Ministry is about significant obscurity in other words don’t try to change the world just change your world.”

“A preacher must always convey the impression that he himself has been gripped by what he is saying. If he has not been gripped nobody else will be. So this is absolutely essential. He must impress the people by the fact that he is taken up and absorbed by what he is doing. He is full of matter, and he is anxious to impart this. He is so moved and thrilled by it himself that he wants everybody else to share in this. He is concerned about them; that is why he is preaching to them. He is anxious about them; anxious to help them, anxious to tell them the truth of God. So he does it with energy, with zeal, and with this obvious concern for people.”

“In a letter written from prison, Paul requested Timothy to bring him ‘the books’ (2 Tim. 4:13). Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth-century ‘prince of preachers,’ expressed amazement at such a request from Paul: ‘He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!’ Spurgeon then reminds us, ‘He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves he has no brains of his own.’”

“Preaching the Word is the primary task of the Church, the primary task of the leaders of the Church, the people who are set in this position of authority; and we must not allow anything to deflect us from this, however good the cause, however great the need.”

“Expositional preaching is empowered preaching that rightfully submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of a biblical text. In that way, it brings out of the text what the Holy Spirit put there…and does not put into the text what the preacher thinks might be there. ”

“Preaching is that wise means of God by which the wisdom of the world is shown to be foolishness, and the folly of the gospel, as the world conceives it, is shown to be true wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:21)”

“Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is ‘an ambassador for Christ.’ That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people.”

“Our works don’t replace the verbal preaching of the gospel, but in them we demonstrate, tangibly, the love and grace that we proclaim with our mouths. Effective gospel preaching is explaining with our words what we demonstrate with our lives. In our service, we make visible the invisible Christ.”

“The 3 essentials for great preaching are: truth, clarity, and passion”

“A ministry which is weak and flabby on the subject of sin is a useless ministry. A preaching ministry that does not result in conviction of sin is useless. If it does not wound, how can it heal? The good news is only for sinners.”

“The size of the crowd rather than the depth of the heart determined success. If the crowd was large then surely God was blessing the ministry. Churches were built by demographic studies, professional strategists, marketing research, meeting ‘felt needs’ and sermons consistent with these techniques. We were told that preaching was out, relevance was in. Doctrine didn’t matter nearly as much as innovation. If it wasn’t “cutting edge” and consumer-friendly it was doomed. The mention of sin, salvation, and sanctification were taboo and replaced by Starbucks, strategy, and sensitivity.”

“Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.”

“Let us remember that it doesn’t take much of a man to be a gospel preacher. . .It takes all of him.”

“I will tell you one thing that proves—proves to a demonstration, that Christ is still precious to his people, and it is this:—send one of Christ’s people to hear the most noted preacher of the age, whoever that may be; he preaches a very learned sermon, very fine and magnificent, but there is not a word about Christ in that sermon. Suppose that to be the case, and the Christian man will go out and say, “I did not care a farthing for that man’s discourse.” Why? “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. I heard nothing about Christ.”

“If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to unpopular, preach holiness.”

“There is no chance of fire in the pews if there is an iceberg in the pulpit; and without personal prayer and communion with God during the preparation stages, the pulpit will be cold…To borrow from the marriage ceremony, it is imperative that ‘what God has joined together, no man should put asunder.’ We dare not divorce our preaching from our praying.”

“The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end.”

“Truth renews the mind. Indeed, the truth which would affect the heart, which moves the heart, which changes the heart, must first enter through the vestibule of the mind if it would enter the sanctuary of the heart. The intention of truth preached is to affect the emotions and the will and the heart and the whole of our humanity…and thus preaching must come first through the mind. It makes its appeal through the mind; it enters through the mind – but it doesn’t simply stop with the mind.”

“God honors preaching that honors Him.”

“What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit, and should never be allowed to enter one.”

“If a preacher is not first preaching to himself, better that he falls on the steps of the pulpit and breaks his neck than preaches that sermon.”

“Preaching is snow. When done right it falls like grace from heaven and makes all it coats more beautiful.”

“Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.”

“Let every preacher take note: Amid the frustrations and hardships of ministry, the most Christ-like thing is to stay focused on your calling, give thanks to God, and go on preaching the Gospel.”

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

“The work of preaching is the highest and greatest and most glorious calling with which anyone can be called.”

“There is one subject which we never hear too much of: we can never hear too much of Christ. When ministers are wearied of preaching Him, they are false ministers: when people are wearied of hearing of Him, their souls are in an unhealthy state. When ministers have preached Him all their lives, the half of His excellence will remain untold. When hearers see Him face to face in the day of His appearing, they will find there was more in Him than their hearts ever conceived.”

“The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes hell shake.”

“It is an obvious error for all to see in those ministers of the Church who make such a wide gulf between their preaching and their living. They will study hard, to preach exactly, and yet study little or not at all to live exactly. All the week long is little enough to study how to speak for two hours; and yet one hour seems too much time to study how to live all the week. They are loath to misplace a word in their sermons; yet they think nothing of misplacing affections, words, and actions in the course of their lives. Oh, how curiously I have heard some men preach, and how carelessly have I seen them live!”

“Courage is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry. Courage is good everywhere, but it is necessary here. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them… But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which shall say not what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say.”

“Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.”

“God expects me to do what I can, where I am, with what I have. No more...but certainly no less!”

“After receiving criticism from someone who admitted they did not evangelize when asked about their preferred method: ‘You raise some good points. Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.’”

“If a sermon is not worth hearing twice, it was not worth hearing once.”

“If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat.”

“Preach not calmly and quietly as though you were asleep, but preach with fire and pathos and passion.”

“The waters of good preaching are always running downhill to the stream of Christ, who he is, and how he has loved us.”

“Just because I’m a wren doesn’t mean I can’t preach an eagle message. Of course I can. Is that a lack of integrity if I preach something bigger than I can even feel, if I preach a message that I haven’t even grown to? That’s not a lack of integrity. That’s accepting the call. That’s what it is because there’s too much at stake to do otherwise.”

“We’ve got preacherettes, preaching sermonettes to Christianettes who smoke cigarettes.”

“God is looking for broken men who have judged themselves in the light of the cross of Christ. When he wants anything done, he takes up men who have come to the end of themselves, whose confidence is not in themselves but in God.”

“Let’s quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ.”

“The expository preacher is not one who ‘shares his studies’ with others, he is an ambassador and a messenger authoritatively delivering the Word of God to men.”

“Building anticipation into one’s preaching simply calls for one basic understanding of the task of the pulpit: the goal is not to get something said but to get something heard.”

“Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.”

“The best way to revive a church is to build a fire in the pulpit.”

“Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.”

“Be a leadoff hitter.”

“What is preaching? It is proclamation, not just moralizing. It is Good News, not just good advice; it is gospel, not just law. Supremely, it is about God and what He has done, not just about us and about what we ought to do.”

“No man can bear witness to Christ and himself at the same time. No man can at once give the impression that he is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”

“Preach Jesus” - “The real truth is that while He came to preach the Gospel, His chief object in coming was that there might be a Gospel to preach.”

“Building anticipation into one’s preaching simply calls for one basic understanding of the task of the pulpit: the goal is not to get something said but to get something heard.”

“People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don’t know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines.”

“My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart and to heal the broken one.”

“There may be small congregations, but there is never a small sermon.”

“This is a day in which one of our great perils is that of doing a thousand little things to the neglect of the one thing, which is preaching.”

“Preaching should break a hard heart and heal a broken one. ”

“I don’t need emotion in my preaching to prove the truth, I need emotion in my preaching to open hearts to receive the truth.”

“...truth cannot be all-inclusive.”

“Do your duty”

“Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.”

“There is no excuse for stepping into the pulpit unprepared…If there are two hundred people in the congregation, it would take you almost seventy hours to have a twenty-minute visit with each one. No one has the right to waste that much time.”

“He who does the Lord’s work without talking to the Lord tries to do the Lord’s work without the Lord’s help.”

“Of all the things we are stewards of in the Gospel Story, we are stewards of the truthfulness of the story.”

“So pray and so preach that, if there are no conversions, you will be astonished, amazed and broken-hearted.”

“God, I am your servant. I place myself in your hands. You do with this situation what you think best. May I respond to whatever happens in such a way that You will be glorified.”

“Let your mission ever be to turn every obstacle, every problem, every bump, every burden, every hurt and every hurdle into open doors to ministry to the glory of the name of the Lord. Life is ministry.”

“Don’t go to the pulpit unless you are prepared.”

“Luther says that vocations are a “mask from God. That is, God hides Himself in the workplace, the family, the Church, and the seemingly secular society”

“God has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.”

“We cannot play at preaching. We preach for eternity.”

“The message of the gospel speaks loudest when people can see Christ in us.”

“The secret of preaching is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions. ”

“I preach as a dying man to dying men as if never to preach again.”

“I declare myself an impenitent believer in the power of preaching. The pew cannot rise higher than the pulpit.
”

“A good coach always coaches to a leader’s potential, not his current level of performance. A good leadership coach will see the potential in you and inspire you accordingly.”

“Preaching is indispensable to Christianity because Christianity is based on the truth that God chose to use words to reveal himself to humanity.”

“Preaching should break a hard heart and heal a broken one.”

“Where the Bible is esteemed as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, preaching can flourish. But where the Bible is treated merely as a record of valuable religious insight, preaching dies.”

“I do believe we slander Christ when we think we are to draw the people by something else but the preaching of Christ crucified.”

“This assumes that the glory of Christ is our highest treasure, not health, wealth, family or even life. So preaching must continually show not that Jesus is the means to prosperity but that he is better than prosperity.”

“Give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God; such alone will shake the gates of hell.”

“It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their [the communists’ ] terms. It was a deal; we preached and they beat us. We were happy preaching. They were happy beating us, so everyone was happy.”

“What is preaching? It is proclamation, not just moralizing. It is Good News, not just good advice; it is gospel, not just law. Supremely, it is about God and what he has done, not just about us and about what we ought to do.”

“If the church is Christ’s bride, and we believe it is, then it is a high and holy calling calling to lead his bride as part of your vocation. Preparation for this role requires wisdom and diligence.”

“My definition of preaching: TELL TRUTH.

I’ve seen long and scholarly definitions that you need a dictionary to decipher, and I’ve seen skillfully crafted thought provoking definitions, but really those two words define the whole thing. Tell Truth.”

“Every preacher ought to read 1 & 2, Timothy and Titus, every week. If he will he will be better to preach and to minister.”

“There is no substitute for a strong pulpit in the building of the local church.”

“Always leave the brethren with hope.”

“Learning to preach is difficult because preaching is difficult.”

“You keep preaching when you’re hurt because there are things that still need to be said”

“You can measure the effectiveness of a sermon by how long it is ‘til Jesus shows up. Preach Jesus.”

“A man who first tried to guess ‘what the public wants,’ and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave.”