George Whitfield and Application
In 1739, George Whitfield began to travel through America, and he had opportunity to hear a faithful evangelical preacher named Gilbert Tennent in New York. Upon hearing Rev. Tennent preach, Whitfield wrote:
I never before heard such a searching sermon. He convinced me more and more that we can preach the Gospel no further than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts....Being deeply convicted of sin at his conversion, he has learned to experimentally dissect the heart of natural man. Hypocrites must either soon be converted or enraged at his preaching....He is a son of thunder and does not fear the faces of men.
With this quotation in mind, here are some questions:
1. Do you (as a preacher) take time to apply the truths of your sermon to your own heart before you preach it to your congregation?
2. Do you struggle with the fear of man, and if so, how does that affect your preaching?
3. Do you work to apply the truth of the text to the hearts of your people, or are you satisfied with just explaining the text?
4. Is it appropriate to dub Mike McKinley as a "son of thunder"?
I've been paying particular attention to why I get bored during a sermon. If there's any one thing, it seems that I get most bored when the preacher doesn't create a crisis for me: that is, telling me that what is coming demonstrates how I've believed wrongly about God, believed wrongly about myself, or am behaving in a manner unworthy of the gospel.That, in turn, seems to stem from the failure of the preacher to have first been worked over by the word before he brings it to me. It is true for preaching what a friend once said about teaching: you teach best from what you're learning most.
Posted by: Rob Faircloth | Jul 13, 2008 9:35:22 PM