A "Feather's Weight" Ministry?

Issue 1.15

The preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. His aim, aspirations, and ambition are for God and to God, and to such a man, prayer is as essential as food is to life.

The preacher, above everything else, must be devoted to God. The preacher's relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his ministry. These must be clear, conclusive, and unmistakable. No common, surface type of piety must be his. If he does not excel in this grace, he does not excel at all.

If he does not preach by life, character, and conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light, his preaching may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo, yet its weight will be a feather's weight, visionary, fleeting as the morning cloud or the early dew.

Devotion to God -- there is no substitute for this in the preacher's character and conduct. Devotion to a church, to opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy -- these are paltry, misleading, and vain when they become the source of inspiration, the animus of a call. God must be the mainspring of the preacher's effort.

From "Power Through Prayer" by E.M. Bounds. Moody Press, 1979. pg. 71

Making It Personal:

What motivates you and your call?

If God were making a list of the three things you are most devoted to, what would he write?

Do you get out of bed in the morning for God, or for "the church"?