A Lifelong Passion

I've been enthralled with preaching the Bible for as long as I can remember. As a boy I was often gripped by the power of preaching and left with the sense that God had spoken personally to me.  Later preaching became the controlling passion of my life as a pastor and theological teacher. 

To this day I remain absorbed by the mystery of God using his Word to change people. As that Word enters human minds under the influence of the Holy Spirit whole new horizons of understanding dawn, new affections are aroused, and life changes occur. I see that happening in my own life day by day. And I've seen it happen in the lives of others as well. I can't but believe that the Holy Spirit working through his Word is the greatest force operating in the world today. 

As I understand it, ministering the Word is the act of serving people with the Scriptures. It can occur in a range of different contexts and through different means. At heart, however, it entails communicating the Bible to other people by helping them understand its message and how that applies to life.  

This is not something we do alone - indeed, we are not even the primary players in the activity. The Bible, the written Word of God, is the Holy Spirit's book. He inspired it and uses it as the instrument of his work in the hearts of men. Human agents are simply the messengers or vehicles he uses to transmit it to others in comprehensible ways. He, however, is the great Teacher, Authenticator and User of his Word. 

Because of that, the human factors involved in serving others with the Word can never be tied up in a neat bundle or reduced to a set of inflexible rules. The history of preaching shows that the Spirit of God uses all sorts of people with all sorts of communication styles to achieve his purposes. As the Apostle Paul said, the "all-surpassing power" in gospel ministry is "from God and not from us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). Spiritual rhetoric differs from its secular counterpart in that respect.

Yet, to say that it is different, and that it cannot be reduced to set iron-clad rules, doesn't mean that there are no underlying principles that govern Spirit-anointed ministry of the Word. There are. True, we can never be in the position of controlling the Holy Spirit's influence but we can put ourselves in the way of his influence. Understanding how to do so is the essence of spiritual rhetoric.

That's what I want to explore in this blog site. It's particularly the interplay of the human and the divine in preaching and teaching the Word that grips me. Understanding this, and being better able to "keep in step with the Spirit", are in my view the greatest need in the church and in the world today.