12 Heart Preparation Necessary
For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart or
pierces the conscience but what comes from a living conscience. -- William
Penn In the morning was more engaged in preparing the head than the heart.
This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt the evil of it
especially in prayer. Reform it then, O Lord! Enlarge my heart and I shall
preach. -- Robert Murray McCheyne A sermon that has more head infused
into it than heart will not borne home with efficacy to the hearers. --
Richard Cecil
PRAYER, with its manifold and many-sided forces, helps the mouth to utter the
truth in its fullness and freedom. The preacher is to be prayed for, the
preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is to be prayed for; his mouth
is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy mouth is made by praying, by much
praying; a brave mouth is made by praying, by much praying. The Church and the
world, God and heaven, owe much to Paul's mouth; Paul's mouth owed its power to
prayer.
How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the preacher in
so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great value is, it helps his
heart.
Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher's heart
into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's sermon into the
preacher's heart.
The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. Men of
bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The hireling and the
stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it is the good shepherd with the
good shepherd's heart who will bless the sheep and answer the full measure of
the shepherd's place.
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the
important thing to be prepared -- the heart. A prepared heart is much better
than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.
Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of
sermon-making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this
scaffolding is the building. The young preacher has been taught to lay out all
his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a mechanical and
intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the
people and raised the clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of
piety, rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of
holiness. By it we have lost the true idea of preaching, lost preaching power,
lost pungent conviction for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian
character, lost the authority over consciences and lives which always results
from genuine preaching.
It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do not
study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the right way to
show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack is not in head
culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of holiness is our
sad and telling defect -- not that we know too much, but that we do not meditate
on God and his word and watch and fast and pray enough. The heart is the great
hindrance to our preaching. Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts
nonconductors; arrested, they fall shorn and powerless.
Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of Him who
made himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant? Can the
proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of him who was meek and
lowly? Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish, hard, worldly man preach the
system which teems with long-suffering, self-denial, tenderness, which
imperatively demands separation from enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can
the hireling official, heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel which demands
the shepherd to give his life for the sheep? Can the covetous man, who counts
salary and money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and can say in
the spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley: "I count it dung and
dross; I trample it under my feet; I (yet not I, but the grace of God in me)
esteem it just as the mire of the streets, I desire it not, I seek it not?"
God's revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and
strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human
brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility,
humility, and faith of a child's heart.
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the divine
and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles. It was this
which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labors in the history of humanity.
This gave to Loyola the strength to arrest the retreating forces of Catholicism.
Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He who has
prayed well has studied well." We do not say that men are not to think and use
their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who cultivates his heart
most. We do not say that preachers should not be students; but we do say that
their great study should be the Bible, and he studies the Bible best who has
kept his heart with diligence. We do not say that the preacher should not know
men, but he will be the greater adept in human nature who has fathomed the
depths and intricacies of his own heart. We do say that while the channel of
preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may broaden and deepen the
channel, but if you do not look well to the purity and depth of the fountain,
you will have a dry or polluted channel. We do say that almost any man of common
intelligence has sense enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace
enough to do so. We do say that he who has struggled with his own heart and
conquered it; who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy,
courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a
manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences
of his hearers -- such a one will be the truest, most successful preacher in the
esteem of his Lord.
