Bruce Ballast

The Spirit’s Role In Preaching

The Spirit’s Role In Preaching

This quote from John MacArthur stimulated my thought process this week as he talks about a mystery in preaching.

  I don’t know what it is the Holy Spirit is doing; I don’t know when He’s doing it and when He’s not.  In fact, I’ve said this before, but there are times when you feel…you know this, there’s a great freedom when you preach and you feel like something’s kind of carrying you along and you’r better than you should be, right?  And you just feel like it was cohesive and it came together and it worked….  The Holy Spirit illumines the Word to my mind, and empowers my passion.”

If you have been preaching for some time, you know what he’s talking about.  There are moments when you know that something is happening.  In my own experience, that happens when I am saying something that was not in my practice for the sermon.  Early in my ministry, I didn’t know what was happening at those moments.  Now I know that it was one way the Holy Spirit chooses to work in the hearts and lives of our hearers.

With this post I am beginning a series of posts on the subject of the Holy Spirit’s role in preaching in your ministry.  Just for fun, I looked back at all of my posts in this blog, going back several years.  Most of them deal with technique.  If you want to check that out, here’s a link to the first post.   Now we turn from technique to power. 

Paul’s Testimony to the Spirit’s Role

The letters of the Apostle Paul give us several clues to the Holy Spirit’s Role in Preaching.  Here is one of the most notable of those passages:

Wow!  Would you be able to say that your preaching is a demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power?  Would you like to bet able to say that?
What Paul is saying here is something that is true: if there are any supernatural effects of your messages, they are a sign not of your great ability in the pulpit.  They are a sign of the dynamic Holy Spirit working through you.  The converse might also be true: that if there aren’t any supernatural results of your preaching, the Holy Spirit is not at work through your preaching.
Ouch!  That hurts, doesn’t it?

Where the Holy Spirit Works

In his book on this subject, Greg Heisler (Spirit-Led Preaching) lists eleven ways the Holy Spirit is at work in preaching:

  1. The Spirit’s inspiration of the Biblical text (2 Timothy 3:16)
  2. The conversion of the preacher to faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11-16)
  3. The gifting of the preacher through spiritual gifts (I Timothy 4:14)
  4. The calling of the preacher to preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:1-2)
  5. The filling of the Spirit to obey the Word (Ephesians 5:18)
  6. The illumination of the Spirit in studying the Word (Psalm. 119:18)
  7. The empowerment of the preacher in proclaiming the Word (1 Corinthians 2:4)
  8. The witness of the Spirit to Jesus Christ (John 15:26)
  9. The opening of the hearts of those who hear and receive the Word (Acts 16:14)
  10. The application of the Word of God to listeners’ lives (Acts 2:37)
  11. The production of lasting fruit displayed in the lives of Spirit-filled believers (Gal. 5:22-23)

Quite a list!

Conclusion

My hope in doing these posts is that we will become more aware of what the Spirit is doing in and through our preaching.  The role of the Spirit in preaching is essential to our success.  So, stay tuned.

As you anticipate what’s coming, here’s a snippet from another preaching expert.

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