HOW TO BE FITTED TO GIVE THE LORD'S MESSAGE

HOW TO BE FITTED TO GIVE THE LORD’S MESSAGE

I am glad you and dear ———— enjoyed the lectures on the Lord’s presence in the midst of those gathered to His name. It is a deeply interesting subject, and the more you meditate on it, the fuller and plainer it opens out to you.

^[p. 33] It is so in everything. It was a saying of J.N.D.’s, that he did not preach well on any subject until he had preached forty times on it!

I am thankful the Lord is leading you to give lectures. Well, there are only two things that I should venture to suggest to you. The first — that you ascertain by prayer and waiting on Him the subject He would have brought before the saints. This at times may cost you much exercise and patience, but you will be very thankful for the result when you are sure of His pleasure. It will give you wonderful confidence. You may not have much eloquence, but the deep assurance that you are doing His pleasure will give you great holy boldness, and however it comes out, you know that His will has come out, though there be no honour to you as to the way it has come out. I have my Master’s message, though I am maybe only a Paddy in delivering it. When I had to send a message by poor Paddy I used to be obliged to make him repeat to me the words in which he would give my message; so assured was I that he would attempt to give my mind in the forcible way in which he would interpret it. The first thing then is to be assured of His mind. The other is — that you express it as He means it, or in other words in the terms in which it is in scripture. This is doubtless the “outline” in 2 Timothy 1: 13, “Have an outline of sound words”; the words he had received from Paul, but the outline was the form in which he presented them. Now one great help to this accuracy is this — never present anything, however clearly you may see it, if you have not reached it for yourself. I have found that many a thing which I had presented in an extreme way because I was sure of it, I put forth in a simpler and a more real way when I had touched it in my own experience.