Sacrificial Preaching!
Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. Jeremiah 1:9.
Lord, am I a Christian by indoctrination or revelation? If I am merely parenting truth, that has been dictated to me, woe is me and woe is any congregation or person that listens to me. When Christ met Paul on the Damascus Road, He revealed Himself to his former enemy. Afterward, Paul did not confer with Flesh and Blood, but escaped into the desert to receive further revelation. (Galatians. 1:15-17). Later, when he emerged to preach Christ, it was an incarnational message he preached, not when he learned at the foot of a human teacher.
All divine knowledge is received inwardly. Cristian education has this place, but only to make Christ revelation to me possible. It cannot make that revelation actual. Too many Christians today have taken on the culture of Christ without taking in His person. What is worse, too many spokesmen for Christ in the world are like the disciples before Pentecost-surrounded by Christ, but not invaded by Him. After Pentecost, the disciples did not need to be taught; they only needed the opportunity to release what had been revealed to them. What had formally been meaningless words now became truths that seared their hearts.
If Jesus did not dare to speak from Himself, (John 17:17) how dare I? If Jesus spoke only what was revealed to him by the Father, (John 7:6), how can we possibly preach anything else unless it is revealed to us? What we need in our pulpits are men who talk about God based on firsthand knowledge. God revealers will never lack an audience. I will do what Habakuk did, “Station myself on the watchtower and wait to see what He will say to me”. (Habakuk 2:1). It is what God says to me that becomes a message, people long to hear!