Publicly proclaim the Word

Yesterday, we discussed the importance of the Bible invading your private life. Yet I am also burdened about the desire for a public proclaimation of the Word of God. I long for the preachers to preach the full counsel of God! Do you?

I feel that if we don't long for excellency in the pulpits that we are settling for something less than what God desires for His church. I begin to feel this hunger when I cross a certain channel on TV. You'll see that smiley pretty boy preacher speaking yet saying nothing to thousands of people. I just want to exhort him, "Preach the Word, in season and out!" There is more to the Bible than thoughts how you can make the most of your life, and how you can have the biggest house, with the best car, with the perfect American family in suburbia. Notice how that last sentence used the pronoun "you" over and over. This type of preaching "tickles the ears" of those who hear and promotes our already over-zealous self-centered natures.

So maybe I am sounding a little over the top today. And maybe you're thinking, "this doesn't apply to me, I'm not a preacher." But believer, how wrong you are! Are we not given the task to pray for godliness, urgency, and biblical preaching in our pulpits? But instead, we don't care (myself included). We go about as Amercian Christians, living our lives everyday. We go to work, we come home, we eat, we sleep. Where is the hunger for God to move? We are at fault!! WE should be begging God for mercy on this land, and revival in our hearts.

If you study the great revivals of the past, there is one thing that they have in common. They began with movements of lay people praying, and with movements of godly preaching in the pulpits. May God call us to pray for this! "if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 2 Chron 7:14 (NKJV)