Inspirational Quotes on Preaching

“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth.”

“It is no marvel that the devil does not love field preaching! Neither do I; I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal if I do not trample all these underfoot in order to save one more soul?”

“The world is my parish.”

“I am well assured that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my fathers tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.”

“Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.”

“If we don't stir up people, move people, we have failed. If you can preach Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, and no one is stirred to go out and do what God says, you haven't done much.”

“Will the sin of this nation stir us? We are a part of this day and time. We have a job to do. We ought to be stirred in our souls against sin and condemn it in every sermon. In every way possible, let people know your attitude.”

“If Jesus preached the same message minister's preach today, He would have never been crucified.”

“A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience.”

“Preachers, we'd better quit this business of turning all our sick folks over to the doctors and hospitals and drugstores. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you'd better find out. You're going to give an account to God for letting your people die without praying for them and preaching the Book to them.”

“Christ in you, on the grounds of redemption this is the Gospel! To preach anything less than this must inevitably produce "Evan-jellyfish" folk with no spiritual vertebrae, whose faith does not "behave!"”

“When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.”

“Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.”

“A preacher should have the skill to teach the unlearned simply, roundly, and plainly; for teaching is of more importance than exhorting.”

“The defects of a preacher are soon spied. Let him be endued with ten virtues, and have but one fault, and that one fault will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times.”

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

“What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this: It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence.”

“There is all the difference in the world between preaching merely from human understanding and energy, and preaching in the conscious smile of God.”

“Be natural; forget yourself; be so absorbed in what you are doing and in the realisation of the presence of God, and in the glory and the greatness of the Truth that you are preaching, and the occasion that brings you together, that you forget yourself completely. That is the right condition; that is the only place of safety; that is the only way in which you can honour God. Self is the greatest enemy of the preacher, more so than in the case of any other man in society. And the only way to deal with self is to be so taken up with, and so enraptured by, the glory of what you are doing, that you forget yourself altogether.”

“I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him.”