Truth is urgent. Urgency in passionately preaching the truth is urgent. Jesus urgently and passionately taught the will of His Father in Heaven though it cost His life. Paul urgently and passionately declared the whole counsel of God until he was pure from the blood of all men.
Passionate, urgent, Spirit anointed preaching is prophetic. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” It bears witness to the life of Jesus. Upon the choices of humankind hinge the earthly spread of either the kingdom of darkness or the Kingdom of Light. Urgency filled, passionate preaching furthers the cause of Christ.
Passionate preaching is a forceful factor in identifying that there is no middle ground in spiritual warfare. This passionate preaching stirs the conscience and convicts the heart. It drives the listener to choose this day whom he will serve. He cannot hang in the deceptive clutches of ambiguous indecision. Passionate preaching urges the faithful to ongoing surrender and awakens the drunken sleeper to repentance. It defines sin from holiness and thereby compels decision.
Not by might nor by power but by the spirit saith the Lord...in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Urgency filled, passionate preaching projects, teaches, convicts and moves in ways that even urgent personal study, devotion, and discipleship cannot. No other form of teaching can effectively replace this God ordained method of ministry in the churches of Jesus the Christ. God ordains that His work, first done in the heart of the preacher, makes possible the persuasion of men. Such messages clearly define kingdom boundaries and bear upon the listener irresistible accountability. Sovereignty deems that under passionate, Spirit anointed preaching, the conscience cannot resist accountability. Without revoke and aside from choice, upon the conscience of the hearer is laid either damnation or assurance.
“Preach the word; be instant [urgent] in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.” Our Anabaptist fore-runners believed in the urgency of passionately calling men and women to more than a mere understanding of truth. They called for active faith obedience. They preached with expectancy, believing that their voices would move people at the core and bring about radical lifestyle changes. They expected their preaching to send men into evangelistic endeavors even unto death. They expected their influence to move men and women to live under the banner and direction of Jesus’ practical example.
Current preaching styles have trended from “therefore knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men” and “we ought to obey God rather than men” to “God understands and feels your pain.” Such is not erroneous per se but passionate urgency must fill the preachers heart to convince, convict and pierce the darkness of today.
If preachers, sermon after sermon, simply present facts in monotone manners, and speak without passion, they dull the hearers’ conscience. They urge them to lackadaisical living, and leave them unmoved. It sears and hardens. It kills vision and burden. It is a seed bed for apostasy. It heightens satisfaction in hypocritical living. It entrenches complacent legalism into the core.
Conviction never lacks emotion. Neither does Holy Spirit anointed preaching. emotionless preaching covertly identifies to listeners that the preacher lacks compelling passion for his own words. Whether a message is encouragement, warning or doctrine; urgent passion and emotion is urgently imperative.
No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. The preacher must be intellectually prepared. God must have worked through his personal study and preparation. Less is a symbol of his own complacency and the ruin of his God appointed accountability. He cannot wield the sword of the Lord effectively to the dividing asunder of body, spirit and soul unless it first happens within. The husbandmen must first taste and feed on his own fruits. By such enabling grace, the parishioners will either be spiritually moved to deeper levels of passionate living or hardened against their conscience. Thus, urgent, Spirit anointed, passionate preaching removes all middle ground, purifies churches and thru faith obedience and the blood of the Lamb defeats fiendish demons, sensual flesh, and Satan.
The secret closet of the preacher must be full of Light. The sword he bears must be severely laid to the roots of his own flesh. Indeed, it presses upon his soul until the fire in his bones can no longer be silent and the Lord is honored.
Greencastle PA
October 2009