God speaking

I preach on regular bases, it never ceases to amaze me how God helps in giving me words to preach,I wonder just how many times I have preached? many, many times . Preaching is many things, an adventure into the unknown, with hopefully God guiding, There are three stages , first , discovering what to preach, secondly, studying it, thirdly preaching it. I preached a word yesterday on Psalm 14, I had three points, [1] The unbeliever. [2]The unbelievable statement. [3]The ultimate security. There is benefit in having points , a local minister I know is being criticised , because he does not always use three points,to that I would say, the problem is not the minister . Moving on ,I was driving in my car recently, and I was feeling hard done by,I turned on the radio ,BBC, 4, and I heard someone singing an old hymn ,by John Bunyan, just the first verse, it goes like this,{ He who would valiant be, gainst all disaster, let him in constancy ,follow the Master,Theres no discouragement shall make him once relent, His first avowed intent, to be a pilgrim} God had spoken to me.

God leading

It does appear in the bible that God leads, and yet at times to actually know the way to go ,appears difficult, to say the least, even when we pray about it, yet for all that I believe God does lead us.I wonder would you agree, that for many of the O.T saints,leading was very clear, they knew what to do,and where to go, the problem was they often did not want to go and do what God told them to do. Jonah is the most obvious example. In Acts 16v6-8 ,Paul and Silas where twice prevented going in a certain way by God [two terms are used there the Holy Spirit ,and the Spirit of Jesus] could it be that God simply shut the door, let me say this shut doors,are just as important in GOD leading us , as open doors are, it is simply God leading us in another direction in order for us to get where He is taking us to.In Psalm 107v7 we read ,He[God] led them forth by the right way,I believe with all my heart that God leads us in the right way , He makes no mistakes, trust Him.

tempation

I have been thinking today about temptation,the thought came to me , everyone without exception is tempted, everyone you see and know, experiences temptation,so do not envy anyone. I found myself singing an old hymn today ,it goes like this,{Yield not to temptation for yielding is sin, Each victory will help you some other to win, fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue, look ever to Jesus, He will carry you through. Ask the Saviour to help you , comfort, strengthen and keep you, He is willing to aid you,He will carry you through .},simple advice, then do it.

Follow on

Back again, thoughts on preaching, did i ever want to give up?, I am not sure, would I ever decide I have had enough, again I am not sure , its not an easy calling, the one thing a preacher wants is a goodly number of people to preach to ,yet most of my ministry has been to small numbers. Does this really matter? well all I can say is I would rather preach to a few, than not preach at all, consider our Saviour He often spoke to individuals, one of his greatest messages was to Nicodemus, John.3. So small can be beautiful,and have eternal importance

preaching

Here goes . my blog is called Bill the preacher, simply because preaching is so much part of my life, it has an inner compulsion about it , that never seems to go away. There are many calls in life in general , acting, writing,etc ,they are all important , yet the call to preach is different, those other calls are valid but preaching is concerned with Gods word which gives to it a special uniqueness .It gives unto the preacher a very special responsiblility, faithfulness to that word, subjects , like,sin,hell,creation, miracles, may not go down well in these times, nevertheless, one must speak on them,it is an interesting translation of , Matthew . 22v37. where we are told about loving God it mentions the mind/ intellect , this is not saying we should not use are intellect , of course we should, the problem is our minds have been affected by sin , our minds need renewed .We often look through a distorted vision ,the unsaved person cannot understand , spiritual truths, they lean on there own understanding,we who are saved , must not fall into the same trap. This is all for now.