E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer, Chicago: Moody Press, 1979
The Divine Channel of Prayer
Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all the 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. Luther spent his best three hours in prayer. (Robert Murray McCheyne)
We are constantly straining to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency of the Gospel... God's plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God's method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John" (John 1:6)... What the church needs today is..., but emn whome the Holy Spirit can use - men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men... He does not anoint plans, but men - men of prayer. (9-10)
The man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life... The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because the man is full of the divine unction. (11)
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