Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


4.29.2004  

Mighty

This week is Francisco Preaching Week on campus. What that translates into is that for the two Seminary Chapel services, we have two graduating Seminary students who have been selected who man the pulpit and deliver to us the Word. Traditionally, the messages are quite excellent. Today, I am blessed to say, was no exception. Jason Allen preached on preaching, using 1 Thessalonians 2:1 - 4. Oh my...how convicting! One part in particular is very humbling. He related to us something that James Pettigru Boyce once said of John A. Broadus, when Broadus was nearing the end of his life and Boyce was a student in the last New Testament English course that Broadus would ever teach.



"Young gentlemen, if this were the last time I should ever be permitted to address you, I would feel amply repaid for consuming the whole hour in endeavoring to impress upon you these two things: true piety and, like Apollos, to be men 'Mighty in the Scriptures.'" Then pausing, he stood for a moment with his piercing eye fixed upon us, and repeated over and over again in that slow but wonderfully impressive style peculiar to himself, "Mighty in the Scriptures," "Mighty in the Scriptures," until the whole class seemed to be lifted through him into a sacred nearness to the Master. That picture of him as he stood there at that moment can never be obliterated from my mind.



Wow. Mighty in the Scriptures. As I sat and listened to Jason preach and plead with us, I thought one thing: there's no way I could ever be "mighty in the Scriptures." Nay, if truth be told, it is by the will of the Father, the love of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit that God would be gracious, and that He would then make the Scriptures mighty in me. This is, I believe, the essence of what Broadus meant. Yes, for when I sat in Alumni Chapel, I thought back to how the Lord has made it abundantly clear over and over again in recent weeks that I am utterly incapable of, on my own, making myself mighty in the Scriptures. It's almost as if I picture the Holy Spirit reaching down, opening my heart, and placing the Word within it. He plants it, He waters it, and He cares for it, that it might not return to Him void. It is He who increases the might of the Scriptures within me, He who speaks and whispers and convicts, He who daily restores me and unfolds His word, that I become ever more captured by the might of His infinitely powerful Word.



Lord...help me...I do not read Your Word as I ought...You know my going out, and you know my returning...my sin is ever before You...in Your grace, grant to me that there would be a might of the Scriptures within me...illumine my heart with Your precious Word...let it burn, let it consume me, but let it be mighty!

posted by Bolo | 1:09 PM
0 speakage
Free Hit
Counters
Dell Coupons
Daily
Read
Listen
Visualize
Blogging Buddies
Old School
Me
Bug Me
Yore
Factuality
Quotatious