Further to my earlier post I thought it would be good to hear from some wiser minds than mine. I have tried to link the quotes according to my response to the initial list of desirable pastoral qualities. the question, to paraphrase Ravenhill is not are you challenged- but are you changed!
1. 'A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.' Jonathan Edwards
2. "It is not so much great talents that God blesses, as great likeness to Christ." R. M. McCheyne
3. 'A heart full of grace is better than a head full of notions.' Thomas Goodwin
4. "The state of the pulpit may always be taken as an index of that of the church. Whenever the pulpit is evangelical, the piety of the people is in some degree healthy; a perversion of the pulpit is surely followed by spiritual apostasy in the church." R. L Dabney
5. "The man who is called by God is a man who realizes what he is called to do, and he so realizes the awefulness of the task that he shrinks from it. Nothing but this overwhelming sense of being called, and of compulsion, should ever lead anyone to preach." D. M. Lloyd-Jones
6. Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty! John Calvin
7. "In preaching (or spiritual training of any sort) there is the need for an experience of the power of the truth in our won souls; if it does not dwell in power in us, it will not pass in power from us." John Owen
8."Tell me in the light of the cross, isn't it a scandal that you and I live today as we do."Alan Redpath
9."Nothing will give such power to our sermons, as when they are the sermons of many prayers. The best sermons are lost, except they be watered by prayer. It is easy to bring to our people the product of our own study; but the blessing belongs to the message delivered to them, as from the mouth of God." Charles Bridges
10. "'Not called!' did you say?'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.' William Booth
“Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.”Matthew Henry
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