Dudley Hall on Preaching the Gospel

"When good seed falls on good ground and is received there is fruit. I am now, more than ever, convinced that the issue is the message. Tweaking the methods and trying to substitute technology for living truth just doesn't work. Jesus commissioned his followers to proclaim his kingdom message in all the earth - knowing that it produces His rule when it is heard and heeded. It is the greatest honor to join the chorus of gospel preachers throughout history in echoing that transforming sound. It is true that hell's strategy is to silence the sound by corrupting it with other sounds that cater to those who have itching ears. There are many sounds being made in the name of the gospel that will ultimately produce death. The clear sound from the Word (the living Christ) produces a life of love that by its very nature changes everyone it touches. This battle of the sounds will rage until the end." - Dudley Hall

Spurgeon on Preaching Christ

"The Holy Ghost never sets His signature to a blank check ... the Holy Ghost will only bless in conformity with His own set purpose. Our Lord explains what that purpose is: 'He shall glorify Me.' He has come forth for this grand end, and He will not put up with anything short of it. If, then, we do not preach Christ, what is the Holy Ghost to do with our preaching? If we do not make the Lord Jesus glorious; if we do not lift Him high in the esteem of men, if we do not labour to make Him King of kings, and Lord of lords; we shall not have the Holy Spirit with us. Vain will be rhetoric, music, architecture, energy, and social status: if our own design be not to magnify the Lord Jesus, we shall work alone and work in vain." - Charles Spurgeon, from The Greatest Fight in the World

"Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin; and, 'God has made us so' - that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of parents is to sustain a child's inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food." - from Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason

"The great want of today is a holier ministry. We do not need more stalwart polemics, more mighty apologists, or preachers who compass a wide range of natural knowledge, important though these be. But we need men of God who bring the atmosphere of heaven with them to the pulpit and speak from the borders of another world." - Iain Murray

Lessons from The Second Mile

Here's a great illustration of the gospel from an old book. The book is The Second Mile by Fosdick. I have no idea how old it is since a friend loaned me the book and lo and behold it is missing the first ten pages. What to do? Read it anyway.

This is great:

"It was in escaping from this legalism [the legalism of rule-keeping and counting up your good deeds and bad] that Paul said he became a Christian. No man is really a Christian until he has escaped it. If a boy, adopted into a strange home, and unruly in his new surroundings, should perforce be given a set of regulations which he must observe, he might become more orderly, but he would hardly by that alone become a true son. But if some day the love of the father or mother should be persuasively revealed to him, so that the love that had been there always laid masterful hold on him, and his love, newly born, should spring up in answer, flooding his spirit with its loyalty, and if, knowing the new life in him, he should take the rules and tear them up, saying "Because I love you I will do all these and much more beside," then a true son would have been begotten. He would have been "born again."

"If ye love me, ye WILL keep my commandments," said Jesus and this statement of inevitable consequence is summed up in Paul's sublime word, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Apart from love a man cannot keep so many rules or do so many deeds  as to make himself a Christian.

I'm a fan of "I Am Second" videos - here's Scott Hamilton.

I want to hear about the Jesus who demanded loyalty, who commanded authority from storms, sinners and satanic forces, who said vexing and frustrating and wild things. I want to hear preaching which is not just faithful to His words but to His TONE: of comfort but also of rebuke, of welcome but also of warning. I want to hear His dares, His call to come and die, His challenge to make hard choices. I want the Jesus of the gospels who does not just meet our needs, but who calls us to bold and courageous adventure, to self-sacrifice, to taking risks. I want the Jesus who promises huge rewards for huge sacrifices, who embraces feisty Peter and wayward Mary and touchy-feely John.

I want the Jesus who welcomed the little children, but also the Jesus with eyes like a flame of fire, with feet of burnished bronze and a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth. Whatever that wild imagery means, I want to grapple with it. I want the Jesus who inspires my awe and calls forth my worship: a gospel from The Gospels. That's the Jesus I want. That's the Jesus I need: the one who is worthy of the honor, adoration and allegiance of men and women alike.

- Bronwyn Lea, from her blog post "What Women Want From the Church"