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Monday, June 25, 2018

The strange effects of preaching

Oh, what strange effects has preaching! Many a time the preacher is thought by the hearer to be personal, to be acquainted with all that is in the hearer’s life, and to be actually describing the life of the hearer, and the hearer winces under such personal description. Time and again men have sought me out as I have left my pulpit, and have said to me alone: “Who told you about my condition, that you laid it bare here to-day?” And I have said: “Why, I never heard of your condition. No living soul has ever breathed a word to me about your condition.” They said: “What then does it all mean?” And I have answered: “It means that God knows about it, and God has guided His preacher, who said: ‘Lord, the preacher does not know what to preach, but thou knowest. Give him the message which thou wilt take and apply to the human conscience,’ and God took the message and with it found the human conscience.” What strange effects preaching has!
From “The Doom of Delay,” by George W. Truett in A Quest for Souls, J. B. B. Cranfill, editor, Dallas, TX: Texas Baptist Book House, 1917, p. 220

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