To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
Your task, O preacher, is to make sure that you are faithful to the text, that you are faithful to the proclamation of that gospel, that you are faithful to set forth the whole counsel of God, and then step back and let it happen.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of staying true to the message being delivered and allowing it to resonate with others.
R. C. Sproul's quote highlights the role of a preacher in faithfully conveying the teachings of the gospel. It stresses the need for integrity in communication, ensuring that the entire counsel of God is presented, while also recognizing that the impact of this message is beyond the preacher's control and must be allowed to unfold naturally in the hearts of the audience.
In practice
During a church service, using this quote to remind fellow preachers of their responsibility.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
I’ve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
Experience by itself teaches nothing... Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
Few things are better in the world than a room full of librarians. I consider them literary heroes. The keepers and defenders of the written word.
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