As I’ve mentioned Christopher Ash’s book The Priority of Preaching really affected me, so I am blogging some thoughts/quotes that stuck out to me. Another one is found on p.61:
We need repeated preaching, because by nature we will never repent and believe. We will ‘move on’ from the simple gospel of daily repentance, daily taking up the cross, daily faith, to a supposed higher life, a more sophisticated life, some kind of super-spiritual life in which repentance and faith are too ordinary and simple to be practiced. This is what will happen unless we sit under faithful preaching.
What really stuck out to me in this was how I need preaching. We don’t tend to think in those ways. Many of us think that our Bible reading is sufficient and what Ash is communicating here is that while that is good, the preached word wields a power that the Spirit uses to keep us centered in the things that really matter. I know I need this. I need sermons I am preparing to affect my heart so that I don’t keep up the same. We need preaching. It matters for our “todays”.