MORSELS FOR MINISTERS

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold
In settings of silver.  (Proverbs 25:11) 

Here are a few pithy and yet profound phrases I have written in my Bible that serve as good reminders for me, and I trust will encourage my colleagues as well.

• “You cannot find anyplace in Scripture where a man was ever sent by God to do a work in which he failed.” (D.L. Moody)
•  “To set one’s heart on being popular is fatal to the preacher’s best growth.” (Phillips Brooks)
• “God, make me holy as a saved sinner can be!” (Robert Murray M’Cheyne)
• “My worth to God in public is what I am in private.” (Oswald Chambers)
• “I preached as never to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” (Richard Baxter)
• “Let us rejoice with one another that in a world where there are many good and happy things for me to do, God has given us the best and happiest and made us preachers of His truth.”  (Phillips Brooks)
• “All God’s men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the almighty grace He has given them, and He gives us this grace for one purpose only—that He may be able to say, ‘This is My man!’ ”  (Oswald Chambers)
• “No reserves, no return, no regrets.” (William Borden, heir to the Borden wealth who gave it up and died as a missionary at age 24 in Cairo, Egypt)
• “The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.”  (Anonymous, though I have seen it attributed to F.B. Meyer, John Henry Jowett and Jim Elliot—God only knows)
• “The supreme work of the Christian minister is the work of preaching.”  (G. Campbell Morgan)
• “I preach—I dare to say it—because I can do no otherwise.  I cannot refrain myself; a fire burns within my bones which will consume me if I hold my peace.”  (C.H. Spurgeon)

Chew on these morsels, savor them, and digest them—and may God use each of us for His glory this Lord’s Day.  Preach the Word!