Enjoying the Power Through Prayer by Edward M. Bounds on Audible, so many great ideas I wanted to copy it from PDF.
In a penetrating and forthright style, Edward M. Bounds offers stimulating advice to Christian servants. "The preaching that kills may have insight and grasp of principles, may be scholarly and critical in taste, may have every minutia of the derivation and grammar of the letter....and yet may be like a frost, a killing frost. Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer, the preacher creates death, and not life.
For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one, we are an odor of death and demise; to the other, a fragrance that brings life. And who is qualified for such a task? For we are not like so many others, who peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as men sent from God - 2 Cor 2:15-17
- Prayer gives the gift of Unction, an anointing, charisma that gives the Gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Romans 1:16
But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. - 1 John 2:20
and yourselves, the unction which ye have received from him abides in you, and ye have not need that any one should teach you; but as the same unction teaches you as to all things, and is true and is not a lie, and even as it has taught you, ye shall abide in him. - 1 John 2:27
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." The world's salvation comes out of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success.
The sun gives life, but sunstrokes are death. Preaching is to give life; it may kill. The preacher holds the keys; he may lock as well as unlock (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18-19,John 20:22-23) . Preaching is God's great institution for the planting and maturing of spiritual life. When properly executed, its benefits are untold; when wrongly executed, no evil can exceed its damaging results. Letter kills, but the spirit gives life 2 Corinthians 3:4–6
When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, - 1 Corinthians 5:4
The true ministry is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made. The Spirit of God is on the preacher in anointing power, the fruit of the Spirit is in his heart, the Spirit of God has vitalized the man and the word; his preaching gives life, gives life as the spring gives life; gives life as the resurrection gives life; gives ardent life as the summer gives ardent life; gives fruitful life as the autumn gives fruitful life. The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.
Eyes that see, ears that hear and heart that understands
