Prayer and preaching

Royce Ogle offers some helpful perspective on academics and preaching:

Keep first things first. Don’t lean too heavily on someone else’s study; do your own. Allow the Bible to speak to you. Spend time with the text, read it and re-read it, meditate on it, memorize it, and then when you are sure what God is saying to you, and you have adjusted your life to it, share it with others.

Finally, pray! “We will devote ourselves to PRAYER and the ministry of the word” are words to live by. I think more important than disciplined study, the best resources, the best study skills, and the best aptitude for homiletics, is the discipline of prayer. You will learn more about God on your knees than you ever will with a book in your lap.

Amen.