Pray Before You Preach or Teach

Though I do sermon prep throughout the week, Saturday is the day for final writing, refining, and soaking in it. This quotation is about preaching most specifically, but it would apply to all kinds of teaching of God's Word.

Augustine:

And so our Christian orator, while he says what is just, and holy, and good (and he ought never to say anything else), does all he can to be heard with intelligence, with pleasure, and with obedience; and he need not doubt that if he succeed in this object, and so far as he succeeds, he will succeed more by piety in prayer than by gifts of oratory; and so he ought to pray for himself, and for those he is about to address, before he attempts to speak. And when the hour is come that he must speak, he ought, before he opens his mouth, to lift up his thirsty soul to God, to drink in what he is about to pour forth, and to be himself filled with what he is about to distribute.

From On Christian Doctrine

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