From the writer to the reader too...

The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwasted flow . . . The man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because the man is full of the divine unction.

~~POWER THROUGH PRAYER by Edward M. Bounds, Chapter 1, Men of Prayer Need

Compulsion...

My writer friend, Jim, left this as a comment on one of my blog posts.

"Recreational writing can be hit-and-miss, but for the Christian who feels God's commission to write for Him, that is not an option. Jesus' apostle Paul wrote, "For I am under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel." The same sort of compulsion exists for Christian writers. While we may not always "preach" the gospel through our writing, Jesus' gospel must form our frame of reference for what we do write."


~~Jim Thompson, http://well-dressed-branch.blogspot.com/