July 17, 2009

  • Are we more concerned with displaying our beautiful dishes or providing food for our guests?

    A little more for you today from John Brown's "Puritan Preaching in England." The book contains nine lectures Brown gave at Yale in 1899.

    To provide historical background for the rest of his lectures on Puritan preaching, Brown spoke on the state of preaching during the period of history prior to the Reformation and the Puritans. Beginning in the 13th century, God began to raise up preaching friars in the Church (I'll be posting more on this soon:  EDIT: For more on the preaching friars, please see my post here). Hubert de Romanis, General of the Dominican Order at the time, issued De Eruditions Prædicatorium, a work in which, according to Brown, Hubert spoke of "preaching as above the Mass and all liturgical services." Brown called it "epoch-making" since it appeared "after long centuries of comparative silence."

    Brown continues:

    As for those who looked more to fine words than true and noble thoughts, they seemed to him [Hubert] to be like people who were more concerned to display their beautiful dishes than to provide food for their guests.

    I thought that little tidbit served as a nice epilogue to my previous post "They went everywhere gossiping the word, why shouldn't we?" in which I wrote:

    So when a friend comes to you at midnight and is hungry and thirsty for the Gospel, instead of remaining silent, instead of sweating bullets, instead of your calling your pastor to get some helps, instead of telling him to call your pastor, can you not trust that when you open your empty mouth your heavenly Father will fill it with the words you need to fill that hungry and thirsty soul He has brought to your doorstep?

    Brothers and sisters, let's not be concerned about displaying our beautiful dishes, bur rather about providing food for our guests. After all, they're not going to eat the china, are they? They coming to us hungry for the living Bread.



    "You give them something to eat."

naphtali_deer

About me...

Christian hedonist in training. Pressing on to know more and more of the joy of the LORD. Pleading with God to rend the heavens and revive and refresh my own soul, as well as His Church, to His praise, honor and glory.

Thank God. He can make men and women in middle life sing again with a joy that has been chastened by a memory of their past failures. ~ Alan Redpath

My other websites

tent of meeting: Prayer for reformation & revival

(See also Zechariah821. Zechariah821 is a mirror site of tent of meeting, found on WordPress)

deerlifetrumpet: Encouragement for those seeking reformation & revival in the Church

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