No matter how clever you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say.

When we learn to handle the Word of truth rightly, we start to see the richness God has put in our Bibles. 

We live in an age marked by resistance to authority. The idea of submission has fallen on hard times. But don’t miss either the logic or the blessing of this concept.

The Bible offers us salvation, spiritual growth, maturity and equipping for all aspects of life and ministry.

Let’s take stock of how God would want us to use our eyes this year. After all, they are an essential gateway by which we can guard our hearts.

We should preach as professionals in the sense of “to the best of our ability” and as amateurs in the sense of “with the passion of a captured heart”.

God offers so much more than mere amnesty. He has paid the great and humiliating price for true justice.

Why not take the year-end as an opportunity to seek God’s heart about your church, your ministry, and your part in His plans? 

It is true that life change is God’s business and I can’t force it; but let us never grow comfortable with people drifting away from Christ.

The nature of God’s character should flow into our ministry, which will then characterise our connection with the church.

Let’s preach in light of 1 Thessalonians 1 and dare to believe that we are participating in the transformation of lives for eternity.

Keep your relationship with Jesus right at the centre of your priorities: that is the foundation for all Christian leadership.

Perhaps, we would do well to ponder the spiritual attack against the Holy Spirit. I suspect that we would find our hearts drawn to Christ in the process.

Preaching is about exegesis and communication,pastoral care, leadership and discipleship, but it should be preeminently about prayer.

Many of us still live under the spell that says we get saved by faith, but then will grow by self-stirred effort. 

Whatever may be going on around us, Psalm 107 suggests what should be happening inside us.

We must have a more God-given, global and eternal perspective so that what we preach stretches and challenges the small, me-focused world of our listeners.

You may love preaching and want to preach every week, but I think it would be wise to schedule a break here and there. 

We worship by giving our everything to God, because he first gave his everything for us. Worship is so costly. It cost God everything.

If you are asked to preach, prepare. Prepare humbly. Prepare prayerfully. Prepare as if “apart from me, you can do nothing”.

There are various ways in which we can start to lean on a powerful crescendo too much, and thereby weaken our preaching.

God is a good communicator. That conviction is critical for effective preaching, but so many build a preaching ministry without this conviction in place.

Perhaps we would do better to be astonished by the profound crop of the good soil instead of trying to count every sprout as part of the harvest.

Whether you have been preaching for a couple of years or half a century, there are hidden explosives that can do untold damage to your ministry.