“a fire in my bones”

The Supremacy of God in Preaching by Piper 

“The wonder of the gospel and the most freeing discovery this sinner has every made is that God’s deepest commitment to be glorified and my deepest longing to be satisfied are not in conflict, but in fact find simultaneous consummation in his display of and my delight in the glory of God.  Therefore the goal of preaching is the glory of God reflected in the glad submission of the human heart.  And the supremacy of God in preaching is secured by this fact: The one who satisfies gets the glory; teh one who gives the pleasure is the treasure” (26)

The cross is the place where my self-reliance and my love affair with the praise of man is executed. (33)

“How utterly dependent we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching!  All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation.  You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other.  You go to study and look down at your pitiful manuscript, and you kneel down and cry, “God, this is so weak! Who do I think I am?  What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death adn the fragrance of life to life (2 Corinthians 2:16).  My God, who is sufficient for these things? “(38).

1744 Jonathan Edwards Sermon

“If a minister has light without heat, and entertains his hearers with learned discourses, without a savour of the power of godliness, or any appearance of fervency of spirit, and zeal for God and the goods of souls, he may gratify itching ears, and fill the heads of his people with empty notions; but it will not be very likely to teach their hearts, or save their souls” (48).

“Don’t be content to guide peole among the foothills of his glory.  Become a mountain climber on the cliffs of God’s majesty, and let the truth begin to overwhelm you so that you will never exhaust the heights of God.  Every time you climb over a rim of insight there stretches out before you, disappearing into the clouds, a thousand miles of massive beauty in the character of God.  Set yourself to climb, and ponder the thought that the everlasting ages of discovery in the infinite Being of God will not suffice to weaken your gladness in the glory of God or dull the intensity of gravity in his presence” (63).