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10 Pitfalls in the Pursuit of Purity

Fighting for Purity

On February 1, 1995 John Piper preached a message at Northwestern College’s chapel service on “Avoiding Sexual Sin.” Oh, how needed the message remains 20 years later! Is there any greater fight for the pastor than the fight for purity? For most, it is the fight.

With his usual passion and sagacity Piper gives Christian leaders and pastors “10 Sexual Pitfalls and Strategies for Protection” in hope “that this Biblical expose of the deceitfulness of sin will intensify our vigilance and keep us pure for the greatest work in the world.” They are well worth your meditation and prayer as you labor for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

10 Pitfalls and Protections

1. PITFALL: Falling in love with the present world. “For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.” (2 Timothy 4:10)

  • PROTECTION: Think long and hard about the deadly poison of world-love and ponder the never-ending delights of the mountain spring of God’s approval and fellowship and beauty.

2. PITFALL: Loss of horror at offending the majesty of God’s holiness through sin. “Nathan said to David, ‘Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? . . . Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and taken the wife of Uriah?'” (2 Sam. 12:7-10).

  • PROTECTION: Meditate on the Biblical truth that all our acts are acts toward God and not just toward man. . . .and that God is so holy and pure that he will not countenance the slightest sin, but hates it with omnipotent hatred. . . .and that the holiness of God is the most valuable treasure in the universe and the very deepest of delights to those whose way is pure.

3. PITFALL: A sense of immunity from accountability and authority. “I have written something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves preeminence, does not acknowledge my authority.” (3 John 9)

  • PROTECTION: Submit yourself to a council of Biblically minded, spiritually wise advisers.

4. PITFALL: Succumbing to itching ears as love of truth evaporates. “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking, and will turn away from listening to the truth.” (2 Tim. 4:3-4)

  • PROTECTION: Cultivate a love for truth, even in its smallest details, and turn a deaf ear to the desires of men to have their ears scratched with vague moralisms that massage them in their sin.

5. PITFALL: A vanishing attention to Scripture. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16-17)

  • PROTECTION: Give yourself untiringly to the study, meditation and memorization of Holy Scripture.

6. PITFALL: A growing disregard for the spiritual good of his followers. An Old Testament refrain is that when the king sinned, the people were ruined. “The Lord will smite Israel. . . and give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which he made Israel to sin.” (1 Kings 14:15-16)

  • PROTECTION: Labor in praying and caring to stir up your heart to love all your people.

7. PITFALL: Disregard for the Biblical mystery of marriage. “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church.” (Eph. 5:32)

  • PROTECTION: Remind yourself repeatedly that your marriage is a living drama of Christ’s relationship to the church. Let your thoughts about your spouse rise from the ordinary to the extraordinary by faith in the truth of Ephesians 5:32.

8. PITFALL: Compartmentalizing of the leader’s life. In the New Testament the leader’s home life is an essential part of his qualification for church leadership (1 Tim. 3:4,12). In other words, the New Testament will not allow us to compartmentalize our life so that some parts of it are irrelevant to the issue of leadership.

  • PROTECTION: View everything—absolutely everything—as woven together by its relationship to the value of the glory of God.

9. PITFALL: A sense of being above the necessity of suffering and self-denial. “Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim. 2:3)

  • PROTECTION: Never forget the promise: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). And never forget that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head (Luke 9:58). And develop a Biblical theology of futility and suffering, especially from Romans 8:17-30.

10. PITFALL: Giving in to self-pity under the pressures and loneliness of leadership. The stronger the impulse of self-pity, the more inclined we are to reward ourselves with unusual treats. The more we pity ourselves for how hard life is the more easily we justify a little extra pleasure —even illicit sexual pleasure.

  • PROTECTION: Embrace the essence of “Christian Hedonism”—the doctrine that no one who suffers the loss of any earthly blessing in the service of Christ will fail to be repaid a hundred-fold now (with persecutions!) and in the age to come eternal life (Mark 10:29-30).

Read all this and more over on Desiring God.

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No Complaint Here

“Pastors should not complain about their congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. Congregations have not been entrusted to them in order that they should become accusers of their congregations before God and their fellow human beings.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 37.

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“An Awful Weapon”

From its inauguration John Piper has delivered a biographical message at the Desiring God Pastors Conference. I’ve personally found these talks to be the highlight of each conference.

This year’s DGPC doesn’t have a biographical talk scheduled, so if you’re clamoring for some stirring vignette of an oak of righteousness here’s a great one: “He Kissed the Rose and Felt the Thorn: Living and Dying in the Morning of Life: Meditations on the Life of Robert Murray M’Cheyne.”

M’Cheyne said, “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.” His life proved that maxim true o’er and o’er, and continues to do so today. Listen here or watch below and let the young Scotsman inspire, challenge, and comfort.

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Another Round of Elder Training

Training Elders

We are about to begin a second round of elder training at IDC.

Our first round began in September 2013. I spent the first nine months in our church’s existence looking for a few faithful men who: 1) had the character of an elder, and 2) were already doing the work of an elder. Three men were found and they all agreed to jump into a six-month candidacy phase. Two eventually were installed as elders in April 2014.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

The candidacy phase is a time to test and train. Books, lectures, and questionnaires become demanding – yet kind – friends for everyone involved. The resources are meant to solidify each man’s areas of convictional strength, while at the same time exposing areas of growth necessary for healthy shepherding.

My greatest burden in the training is to tease out the candidates’ beliefs in matters of ministry philosophy. One wise pastor encouraged told me several years ago, “One of the things I’ve discovered is that its possible to get elders who have all the theology right, but still have issues later over different philosophies of ministry. That was the most significant challenge we faced in our first 3-4 years.” It’s advice I’ve yet to forget.

I’m remembering it afresh as we stand on the threshold of another round of elder candidate training. Here’s the content we are using to tease out theological and philosophical convictions this time around. I hope it might be a launching pad of sorts for your own elder candidate training.

Download a PDF of IDC’s Elder Training Schedule.

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The True Test of Faith

1 John Podcast

–This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Light of Love,” on 1 John 2:7-14.–1

John’s opening salvo in his message came in 1:5 when he said, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Since then he has guided us to see how we might know we are truly walking in the light with God. At the end of chapter one he said increasing consciousness and confession of sin reveal true fellowship with God. We saw last week in the beginning of chapter two that we know we are in Christ if we obey his commands.

His instruction continues in our text with the test of genuine love for fellow Christians. His burden in this passage is oh so simple, “A church who lives in the light walks in love.” I want to hone in on that truth with this main point: Love for the family of Christ is the true test of living faith in Christ.

TAKE HEED!

Look at how 2:7 and 2:8 begins, “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment . . . At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you.” Do you wonder if John is merely confused in his old age? He refers to a commandment that is simultaneously old and new. How is that even possible? The context makes clear he’s talking about the command to love each other (cf. John 13:25; 2 John 5). So here’s the question we must ask at the outset, “In what sense is the law of love old and new?

In What Sense is the Law of Love Old and New?

First, it seems likely John’s opponents in Asia Minor accused him—and other church leaders—of theological novelty in their confession of Christ. An easy rhetorical swipe in religious debates throughout the centuries has been to call some doctrinal teaching “new.” Novelty ordinarily undermines theological stability. Thus, John wants his readers to know that his commandment actually isn’t new; it’s not something he recently invented.

Notice how 2:7 helps us see what John means by the law’s “oldness.” He says, “[This is the] old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.” When John refers to the message heard at the beginning he always referencing the gospel message that arrived with Christ. Anyone familiar with the ministry of Jesus would know his command to love was a central tenet of his teaching. So, the law of love is old because it originated with Jesus, in his commands and ministry.

But in what sense is it also new? Look at 2:8, “[The] new commandment . . . is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” That last phrase “the true light is already shining” is a favorite way that John, in his gospel (Jn. 8:12; cf. 1:19; 3:19; 9:5; 12:35, 46) likes to talk about a new age dawned with Jesus. The law of love is new because it culminated in Jesus. One commentator say that in Jesus “a new era has dawned, a new age has come, a new empowering light is shining, all of which give the church new possibilities for love and a new imperative” to love. And if you survey Jesus’ teachings on love I think you can summarize its “newness” in three ways:

  • It was new in its emphasis. In Mark 12:30 Jesus said the greatest commandment is loving the Lord with your whole being and right next to this is loving your neighbors as yourself. Loving God and loving your neighbor are two sides of the same “commandment coin.” And as common as that might be today, we have no record of anyone combining them before Jesus.
  • It was new in its extent. To an orthodox Jew the Gentiles were not to be loved; they believed God created the Gentile peoples for hell. But Jesus called His people to love everyone, to share his love with the Gentiles nations.
  • It was new in its example. John wants us to know that just as the sunrise pierces the night, Jesus’ life and death broke the dark dominion of sin. And at the epicenter of His burning light is white-hot love for His people. As he said in John 15, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus death on the cross is the greatest display of love the world has ever seen because it shattered sin forever.

If you are not a Christian, oh how I pray you would know this love of Christ. The Bible says God showed his love for us that even while we were still sinner, Jesus died for us. Where are you turning for love? Anything or anyone in the world can never love you perfectly, but Jesus, the King over this world, will love you to the uttermost. He only calls you to turn from your sin and trust in Him.

Church, we can’t miss the spiritual gold John tucks away in the middle of 2:8, this new commandment of love “is true (lit. “genuine”) in him and in you.” John expects the church of Christ will reflect the love of Christ. What kind of love do you have for your brothers and sisters in Christ? John believes it is to be quite literally “otherworldly.” We are corporately tested by our love for each other.

I once saw an article that during World War II the United States loved to have a color-blind soldier on reconnaissance and spotter flights because they could not be fooled by the ordinary and colorful tricks of camouflage. Seeing in black and white let them cut right through to the truth.

It seems like John is almost colorblind spiritually, he always categorizes people in black and white categories. For notice, as we move into 2:9-11, how he puts people into one of two categories: lovers or haters.

Look at 2:9, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.” The point is clear enough, true Christians and true churches reveal the light by their love. But what’s interesting is John polarization of categories. You might be thinking, “Just because I don’t love someone doesn’t mean I hate them.” But John intends to lift us out of the casual indifference we can be tempted with towards our fellow Christians. What ways this week can you more greatly channel God’s love into the lives of your fellow church members?

See now John’s positive contrast in 2:10, “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.” I want to come back to this verse more at the end, but for now we need to see how John is bringing all the previous strands of teaching together in this verse. In chapter 1 he said we are to walk in the light as He is in the light. Last week John spoke of obedience to Jesus’ commands in general as the way we test ourselves. This week he speaks of obedience to the love commandment in particular is the ultimate test of assurance. Love is the living evidence of new birth and eternal life.

Notice how John returns to the dark side in 2:11, “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” He’s upped the ante here hasn’t he? The first part of 2:11 echoes 2:9, but then he compounds the spiritual danger of hating one’s brother by saying us it makes one wander around blind in the darkness. A lack of love is like a spiritual blindfold over the eyes of your heart. It’s blinds you from seeing that satisfaction and salvation are found in Christ alone. Hatred blinds the heart and hardens the soul to that a person only wanders deeper and deeper into sin.

John point is quite simple isn’t it? “A church who lives in the light walks in love.”

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  1. What’s with all the color in this text? See my post, “Colorful Preaching,” on why I color code my sermon manuscripts. ↩
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Old Hymns Made New

I’m surely biased since he’s a good friend, but few modern hymn writers are as good as Matt Boswell. In addition to his many originals Bos has rearranged some old hymns well worth your attention. Here are two you should know about.

The first is “God the Spirit,” a new melodic arrangement of Samuel Stone’s lyrics from 1866. Songs have instructive power and Stone’s hymn is a crash course in pneumatology. The second redone hymn is Henry Allon’s “In the Name of God the Father,” an eloquent tune on the Lord’s Supper. The language on this one is earnest, poetic, and rich. It would be a great preparatory song for the church’s gathering at Jesus’ Table.

How many songs does your church have that explicitly and melodically extol the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and the Lord’s Supper? However many you have, I’m sure you’d love to have more! So check out these two old hymns made new.

God the Spirit

Holy fount of inspiration
By whose gift the great of old
Spoke the word of revelation
Marvelous and manifold

Chorus
God the Spirit we adore Thee,
In the Triune Godhead One
One in love and power and glory
With the Father and the Son

Author of the new creation,
Giver of the second birth
May thy ceaseless renovation
Cleanse our souls from stains of earth

When we wander Lord direct us,
Keep us in the Master’s way
Let they strong swift sword protect us
Warring in the evil day
Shall the church now faint or fear
When the Comforter is near

In the Name of God the Father

In the Name of God the Father,
In the Name of God the Son,
In the Name of God the Spirit,
One in Three, and Three in One;

In the Name which highest Angels
Speak not ere they veil their face,
Crying, Holy, Holy, Holy,”
Come we to this sacred place.

Lo, in wondrous condescension,
Jesus seeks His altar-throne;
Though in lowly symbols hidden,
Faith and love His Presence own.

When the Lord His temple visits,
Let the listening earth be still;
May the Spirit’s sweet indwelling
Each believing heart fulfill.

Here, in Figure represented,
See the Passion once again;
Here behold the Lamb most Holy,
As for our redemption slain;

Here the Saviour’s Body broken,
Here the Blood which Jesus shed,
Now the offer of communion,
Into lasting joy be led.

Here shall highest praise be offered,
Here shall meekest prayer be poured,
Here, with body, soul, and spirit,
God Incarnate be adored.

Holy Jesus, for Thy coming
May Thy love our hearts prepare;
Thine we pray would have them wholly,
Enter, Lord, and tarry there.

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A Ministry of Growing Power

Powerful Preparation

“A ministry of growing power must be one of growing experience.

“The soul must be in touch with God and enjoy golden hours of fresh revelation. The truth must come to the minister as the satisfaction of his own needs and the answer to his own perplexities; and he must be able to use the language of religion, not as the nearest equivalent he can find for that which he believes others to be passing through, but as the exact equivalent of that which he has passed through himself. There are many rules for praying in public, and a competent minister will not neglect them; but there is one rule worth all the rest put together, and it is this: Be a man of prayer yourself; and then the congregation will feel, as you are entering an accustomed presence and speaking to a well-known Friend.

“There are arts of study by which the contents of the Bible can be made available for the edification of others; but this is the best rule: Study God’s Word diligently for your own edification; and then, when it has become more to you than your necessary food and sweeter than honey or the honey-comb, it will be impossible for you to speak of it to others without a glow passing into your words which will betray the delight with which it has inspired yourself.”

– James Stalker, The Preacher and His Models: The Yale Lectures on Preaching, 53-54. HT: Murray Capill.

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Train Your Soul for Joy

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My pathway into the Puritans began, unexpectedly, in the spring of 2007 when I read George Marsden’s Jonathan Edwards: A Life. I found Edwards’ passion for God’s glory and personal holiness captivating. What fascinated me most about his spirituality was his heavenly-mindedness. Thinking Edwards was a “Puritan” (he’s technically isn’t) I googled, “Puritans and heavenly mindedness.” Over 800,000 hits came back and my life has never been the same.

I came across J.I. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness and a bunch of works by some guy named Joel Beeke. I devoured these secondary sources with an appetite bordering on gluttonous. But I had yet to really get into the original Puritan works.

Ad Fontes!

That all changed on Christmas Day 2008 when generous family members ushered in, what I’ve come to call, “The Winter of Puritan Paperbacks.” Banner of Truth’s wonderful reprints opened my eyes to new vistas of doxological approaches to theology. From there, I purchased the complete works of Boston, Brooks, Bunyan, Flavel, Goodwin, Sibbes, and Swinnock. It seemed as though I was always reading a Puritan work; I was squarely in their grip and there I remain.

In the Puritans I find reverent affection for our great God.

In the Puritans I find doctrinal precision coupled with experiential application.

In the Puritans I find a devotion to worship God in all of life.

In the Puritans I find a passion to be with Christ’s church in worship.

In the Puritans I find a peculiar strength for suffering.

In the Puritans I find a delightful submission to God’s providence.

In short, the Puritans train my soul for joy. I believe they can do the same for you.

A Very Good Place to Start

Many Christians – and pastors – today live with spurious assumptions about the Puritans: “They are killjoys!” “They are impossible to read!” “They are crazy, introspective legalists!” There are, to be sure, some verbose, legalistic joy-crushing Puritans, but those men are an aberration within the movement. The overwhelming majority are “Doctors of the Soul” without peer in church history.

The only way you’ll know if I’m right or wrong is to step into the Puritans waters (come on in, the water’s great!). Here are a few works that capture the Puritan ethos and will likely cause you to swim deeper into this ocean of spiritual goodness.

0851518672mThe Mortification of Sin by John Owen. Jerry Bridges said, “John Owen’s treatises on Indwelling Sin in Believers and The Mortification of Sin are, in my opinion, the most helpful writings on personal holiness ever written.” JI Packer once wrote, “I owe more to John Owen than to any other theologian, ancient or modern, and I owe more to this little book (The Mortification of Sin) than to anything else he wrote.”

No one, outside of the apostles, peered so deeply into the human heart and the glory of Christ as this Prince of Puritans. Owen is thus unusually able to steel our gaze against the heart-fortresses of sin. His application of truth to the believer’s sin-slaying work is, at certain points, breathtaking. In the fall of 2013 I had a few dozen men in my church read The Mortification of Sin and a large handful said something like, “This is one of the most useful books I’ve ever read!” If you read one book the rest of this year, make it Owen’s classic. I promise your soul will say, “Thank you.”

0851510027mPrecious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks. One area where the Puritans uniquely excel is on the always pressing topic of spiritual warfare. When it comes to Satan’s schemes, Brooks knows best. I don’t think Banner of Truth is exaggerating when they say, “Brooks treated the seductive influence and terrible power of Satan in a way greatly more full and suggestive than in the literature of the present day.” Brooks takes on 38 (!) different favored devices of the Worm and gives specific remedies for each one. His insight into Satan’s ways are stunning. The final chapter, “Ten Special Rules Against Satan’s Devices” is pure gold. Spurgeon had a particular affection for Brooks, saying,

Had Brooks been a worldly man, his writings would have been most valuable; but since he was an eminent Christian, they are doubly so. He had the eagle eye of faith, as well as the eagle wing of imagination. He saw similes, metaphors, and allegories everywhere; but they were all consecrated to his Master’s service.

9781573581134mThe Art of Divine Contentment by Thomas Watson. If there was an award for “The Most Readable Puritan” its recipient would surely be Thomas Watson. Joel Beeke says Watson stands out from all the rest because of his “depth of doctrine, clarity of expression, warmth of spirituality, love of application, and gift of illustration.” You really can’t go wrong with any of Watson’s works (All Things for Good and The Doctrine of Repentance are excellent), but I suggest The Art of Divine Contentment because the subject is a perennial struggle for every Christian. Launching off from Philippians 4:11, Watson writes, “For my part, I know not any ornament in religion that doth more bespangle a Christian, or glitter in the eye of God and man, than this of contentment. . . . If there is a blessed life before we come to heaven, it is the contented life.”

Tolle lege!

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Forceful Preaching

Power In Preaching

I’m sure we can all remember a time when we heard God’s word preached with peculiar power. If you recall such a time, here’s my question, “What about that sermon was particularly powerful?” You see, it’s one thing to say a sermon had power and it’s another thing to know why it had power.

Understanding any powerful sermon is utterly dependent on the sovereign Spirit opening hearts, I want to think about a few ordinary conduits of sermonic power.

Like a solar panel soaks up energy, we want our sermons to soak up – to varying degrees – the power in each of these forces. In my mind there are at least four power sources in every sermon.

4 Ordinary Forces in Preaching

The preacher’s personality. Of all the forces I’m going to mention this one seems to be the most dangerous. Is it wise to build a preaching ministry on a compelling personality? I hope you’d say, “No.” Yes, any sermon is going to have undeniable elements of personality; as Phillip Brooks’ famously said, “Preaching is truth through personality.” Yet, if the forceful gales in our sermons depend on the leveraging of our personality we’ve missed something. I know some who think personality should be turned off in preaching and others who say, “Use it to the glory of God!” It seems better to treat personality as something like cilantro (or whatever ingredient you think is best). When cooking Latin fare cilantro is often needed to produce the right taste, but too much of it derails the dish. So too is it with personality in preaching.

The preacher’s rhetoric. The study of rhetoric has fallen hard in our day. A quick perusal of Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses show just how far we’ve gone. I’m not thinking here of rhetoric being synonymous with eloquence. Paul rung the death knell on sophistic eloquence in 1 Corinthians 2 when he said, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” If that’s what you associate with rhetoric, crucify that notion.

What I have in mind is other Pauline rhetorical realities, such as, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.” Or his request for the Colossians to pray “that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” Our sermons needs persuasive clarity; that’s the biblical ideal of rhetoric. We must work hard with language and logic so that our sentences burn with simplicity. We don’t want sermons that wander in their argument or come with wimpy in coherence. Wise rhetoric keeps us from babbling and can function as a springboard unto forceful preaching.

Balance all the above sentiments, however, with what else Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

The preacher’s godliness. Now here’s something we all need in our preaching: sermons which are the overflow of living communion with God. I can think of numerous preachers whose communion with Christ gives their sermons an unusual sense of living energy. When they ascend to the sacred desk they did so as men just come from the mountain of God. These men glow with the truth and of Jesus, and that glow radiates into their hearers. You feel as though you must listen for this is a “man of God.”

The exhortation here is to strive for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord, so our sermons will have a saltiness about them. Keeping a close watch on ourselves and the teaching will save us and our hearers. Get in the spiritual weight room and train yourself for godliness. Then, with the Spirit’s illuminating help, your sermons will really sting and sing.

The preacher’s passage. You may notice I am operating in descending order of importance. The preacher’s godliness is the irrefutable covert reality in powerful preaching. The only real overt reality in a strong sermon is the degree to which the preacher sticks to inspired Scripture. The pastor’s words are not breathed out by God (in the technical sense of inspiration), but his text is. And those words are useful for molding the congregation in Jesus’ image. Only His words are “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Saturate your sermon with His language more than your own.

The question then is, “How faithful is your sermon to your passage?” How you answer that question has a direct correlation to how powerful you sermon will be. Let’s long for and encourage plain preaching which clings to the supreme power of God’s word. The personality, rhetoric, and holiness of a preacher cannot – in and of themselves – do anything, not least of which is be an unquenchable source of power. But God’s word is indeed an unending power plant for preachers. Will you treat it as such?

All in Due Proportion

Use your personality wisely and humbly.

Pursue precision and concision in rhetoric ruthlessly.

Cultivate communion with God joyfully.

Root your sermon in God’s word expectantly.

And then preach with power.