Preaching and the Positive Mind

My preaching is an evolving animal - it is still developing and forming. They say the first year of full-time ministry is a year of preaching experimentation for the young minister!

I have been inspired recently to preach positively - at least as much as the context of the bible passage I have on the day will allow.

Some reflections on this:

My first minister as a Christian, Richard Quadrio, said to us once to always preach grace, not guilt. Guilt, he said, is always a 'too easy' default.

Guilt doesn't achieve anything. Lots of sermons follow this route:

• This is what God says in this passage
• You should do this
• You are not doing it
• Try harder

Sure, God can work within this pattern of preaching. But this gives so little motivation for real change. Also, it tends to focus attention more on us than God.

People are motivated to do what God says when they hear how loving and how good God is, not just how bad we are. Guilt brings on bad feelings with no hope for change. Preaching grace brings hope and desire to change because God is so good.

I keep reading quotes such as this:

Preach with such life and awakening seriousness...and with such easy method and with such variety of wholesome matter that the people may never be weary of you. Pour out the rehearsal of the love and the benefits of God, open so to them the privileges of faith, the joys of hope, that they may never be hungry. (Swinnock, The Christian Man's Calling, 3:905)

One of my mentors, David Miles (a wonderful preacher and example of grace-filled preaching) recommended the book Preaching and the Positive Mind by P T Forsyth, which deals with this subject. I am about to read it. With the link you can read it with me!

With thanks to I Love a Sunny Day who wrote some of this post.

The Soul of Prayer

I finished the book 'The Soul of Prayer' by P T Forsyth last week. You can read it here.

Being totally honest it was a torturous read, only 92 pages but pretty hard to get through. However it was worth wading through the mud to get to the pearls.

Let me show you some:

It is a wrestle on the greatest scale - all manhood taxed as in some great war, or some great negotiation of state. And the effect is exhaustion often. No, the result of true prayer is not always peace. (p87)

..lose the real conflict of will and will, lose the habit of wrestling and the hope of prevailing with God, make it mere walking with God in friendly talk; and, precious as that is, yet you tend to lose the reality of prayer at last. In principle you make it mere conversation instead of the soul's great action. You lose the food of character, the renewal of will. You may have beautiful prayers - but as ineffectual as beauty so often is, and as fleeting. (p92)

To Quench The Thirst of A UK Reader

Over a month ago an interested reader requested my thoughts on P T Forsyth's 'The Soul of Prayer'. Well, perhaps I can begin with a short quote from the book, with thoughts to come down the track.

Prayer is the highest use to which speech can be put. It is the highest meaning that can be put into words. Indeed, it breaks through language and escapes into action. We could never be told of what passed in Christ's mountain midnights.

Words fail us in prayer oftener than anywhere else; and the Spirit must come in aid of our infirmity, set out our case to God, and give to us an unspoken freedom in prayer, the possession of our central soul, the reality of our inmost personality in organic contact with His.