Keeney Dickenson | Spurgeon, Prayer, and the Power of Preaching

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Before I jump into the episode, I wanted to remind you about all the resources that we have available at UsefulToGod.com. You can check those out at UsefulToGod.com. I also wanted to alert you to something that I think is pretty special. It's a German Reformation tour that we're running this fall. We'll be walking in the footsteps of Luther and Bonhoeffer and traveling from Berlin to Munich and just reflecting on the enduring witness of faithful believers. The tour runs October 30th to November 9th, and we're hoping that everybody can book by May 31st. Spots are filling up fast, so check that out. The link to that tour is in the show description of today's episode. So if you're interested, check it out. Now, let's dive into this episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Keeney Dickerson. And he is not only the author of a book that we're going to be talking about on Spurgeon, the Prayer-Powered Pulpit of the Prince of Preachers, way too much alliteration there for me, obviously. But we're going to be talking a little bit about the book. But he's also a senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Crockett, Texas, and he is the founder and operates a ministry called Prayerdyne Ministries. And we're going to hear a little bit about that as well. So welcome, Keeney, to the program. How are you doing? Well, thank you, James. I'm honored to be here and appreciate your ministry. Yeah, yeah. So tell me a little bit about, you know, I got the chance to kind of scroll through some of the portions of the book you sent me graciously, an electronic copy that I was able to kind of work through. This isn't a book about Spurgeon, but I'm wondering if maybe you can tell us a little bit about Spurgeon just for folks who aren't familiar with Charles Spurgeon. Is that possible? Yes. For the latter half of the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon pastored what came to be known as the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. It was a sanctuary that held about 6,000 people, had three levels. He preached from the second level. And so it was a pretty vast congregation. People traveled all over the world to be there to hear him preach. And also there were a lot of pastors and preachers that would come to hear him. And so in his sermons, he did quite a bit of teaching with statements about the pulpit, about preparing. And also there were 60 plus organizations and ministries that developed out of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. And I like to call them tributaries of ministry that he oversaw. And so he was in great demand. His sermons would be taken down in shorthand. He would edit them and then they would sell in the penny pulpit all over the world. They would be sent out and published in newspapers, et cetera. So he was a very prominent voice for the Lord in his day and has come to be known as the Prince of Preachers. It's interesting. You know, I ran across Charles Spurgeon, I think, probably first or most prominently while I was doing some work with the D.L. Moody Center. And D.L. Moody was heavily influenced by Charles Spurgeon. He actually went over to England to visit. It was at this time when he was having a particularly dry spell in his faith. He'd just come out of a lot of different difficulty. I mean, D.L. Moody was, you know, he ministered during the Civil War, which couldn't have been easy. Then I believe after the Chicago fire, he took a trip over to England, if I'm recalling the timeline correctly, and actually met with Spurgeon and Spurgeon was a big influence on him. Really helped him sort of rethink how he was powering his ministry. And I'm sure that this emphasis of prayer and the emphasis of the Holy Spirit preaching and, you know, just the way to go about preparing yourself to convey God's word and to do God's work had a profound influence on D.L. Moody. So that's kind of my context for Charles Spurgeon. Yes, and I believe D.L. Moody made the statement having been with Spurgeon and hearing him preach. He was very impressed with his preaching, but it was the pulpit praying that he did that really captivated him, I think, as well. And they had an ongoing relationship of support and encouragement, but I think he was giving Charles Spurgeon a hard time about smoking a cigar. And Spurgeon patted him on the stomach and said, when you lay down the fork, I will lay down my cigar or something like that. They had a pretty friendly relationship. Well, I know the book is on prayer and about preparation for preaching, but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about Paradigm. Paradigm Ministries came first, correct? Yes. And so maybe tell us about Paradigm and maybe if it connects, what prompted you even to write this book? Where, you know, where did you, where were you led to get into this and really convey this to a contemporary audience? And what are you hoping that people take away from the book? But yeah, start with Paradigm Ministries, maybe. Give us the timeline and story a little bit. Sure. It was actually started in 1994 out of a fresh commitment in my life to prayer and the ministry of the word, as the apostles stated in Acts 6-4. And out of my journaling and my time with the Lord, I developed some teaching on the keys to Christlike prayer, which explores the way Christ walked with the Father in his earthly life and ministry and some principles there. Began to teach that in churches and began to grow on my burden for pastors and churches just to find a spiritual vitality and authenticity in their walks with God. And out of that grew another resource called the Prayer Meeting First Aid Kit, where it was over 300 prayer exercises that we developed in our own local church prayer meeting. And then some work on a solemn assembly manual to help people move through corporate repentance. And then one called In Season, Out of Season, just about the challenges of pastoral ministry. And so over time, my burden for pastors, myself included, to finish strong and to stay faithful to the Lord. I began to see how that had to be anchored in anyone's life, especially pastors, to a Scripture intake and prayer. And so after 25 years from my master's work, I went back for my doctoral work and did it in biblical spirituality. And for my thesis, I settled in on Spurgeon, whom I've studied and gleaned from since my teens, especially lectures to my students. And so my thesis was on preaching from the overflow of your personal piety and not being taken down by the undertow, but ministering from the overflow. And I think in all of our lives, if we become detached from prayer or Scripture, which those two travel together, I think, in our lives, that undertow hits pretty fast. And there's a lot of fallout and failure when that happens. So I think that answers the question. Yeah. How do you see that work? I'm just interested to understand how that might work. You know, as somebody who teaches an awful lot, I teach a weekly Bible study. It's about a 90 minute Bible study with a group of guys. And then I'm teaching at my church on Thursday nights. And, you know, as much as I try to synchronize it so I'm not having to do two preps and those kind of things, right. It feels like the pace of the teaching can sometimes get away from me. And so I don't always have as much time to reflect on what I'm studying as I'd like to. Now, I think as I've gotten older, that discipline has, you know, I've been less frantic about the way I do it. And so I have a little bit more time to reflect, but there's still it's an awful lot to go through and to allow that to be the overflow of my piety. How do you counsel people to really do that? Like, I suppose just from personal interest, I'm wondering. Yeah, and I think Spurgeon's a great example for us. And I think, well, just to walk through part of his weekly schedule, I think helps to see the magnitude of what he was dealing with because he was doing extensive correspondence with a dip pen, dipping it in ink and writing. He was interviewing prospects.

He was interviewing prospective students for his college. He was lecturing on Fridays to the students. On Thursdays, he would make himself available under what was called the Question Oak. It was an oak tree where they would come and ask him questions about life and ministry. And along with that, he was preaching as many as 10 times a week. And then attending these yearly gatherings of these 60-plus organizations and speaking at those and then, I mean, it goes on and on and on. Yeah. And then he would give some social lectures, like he did a lecture on gorillas one time. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Tying in to evolution, because that was a hot topic that was just beginning to take shape. And so there was just a lot going on. And Spurgeon, so he didn't have the lengthy time to study that others would, didn't have the luxury of formal theological education. So it all tied in with his time in the Scripture and his time of prayer. And he made a statement one time that he never prayed longer than five minutes, but never went more than five minutes without praying. I see. And so he was like living this open-ended conversation with the Lord, meditating on the truth that he would be delivering, asking the Lord to help him unpack that. He was able to multitask very well because he said when he was preaching, he would have as many as eight different thoughts in his mind at once. And so I'm sure psychologists would already diagnose him in several ways for that. So here was a very busy man, but it was his walk with God, his love for the word. And so when he was spending time in the word, he was meditating a lot on the Scripture and the ways of God. And then you read a lot about his Saturday evening ritual of saying goodbye to his guests and going up and just frantically trying to pull things together for Sunday morning. And it sounds like that's how he prepared, but if you're preaching as much as he was, Saturday night would be your special time. Right, right. I think putting that in context helps all of us. So I think every person has to consider their personality, their ministry context, their family season that they're in. You know, with young children, your time with the Lord is going to have to look a little different. But I think being comfortable with our personality, our call, and where God has placed us, and making time and taking the time necessary for us to do what God has called us to do is helpful. And I think prayer is a key because it takes longer, I think, for me to be prepared as a messenger than to prepare the message itself once I'm prepared. Yeah. Yeah, so that ongoing emergence or that ongoing immersion within God's word, with prayer. I mean, I love that idea. If I never prayed longer than five minutes, but I never went longer than five minutes without praying, I think is a really great. I think, you know, for somebody who studies a lot, and you've been through doctoral work, master's work, doctoral work, I sort of wish I'd known that a little bit. I did my doctoral work when I was fairly young, and I would even say fairly young in my faith. And I think that I probably missed out on a good bit of that. I was very good at the studying part, but I wasn't always necessarily understanding how to integrate that with my own personal piety, my own understanding of faith. And so, you know, you're constantly sort of struggling with how do I bridge from the head knowledge to the spiritual knowledge? You know, how do I avoid becoming a, you know, having the important things of God lodged in a mind unsuited to wield them? You know, that kind of tension. And I think, again, as I've gotten older, that's gotten easier and easier. But I think, you know, helping pastors and seminarians just all over the place understand how those two fit together early on would be quite powerful. Right. And I think in our training, because prayer is not measurable or testable, it's alluded to and assumed at times. And so one of the goals for the book is that it would be a supplemental textbook to help integrate prayer at every stage of the sermon preparation. And so Spurgeon made comments and taught his students and practiced prayer in the selection of the text, the studying of the Scripture, all the way through to when he was preaching, he could be praying because he was able to do that. And he pictured it as reaching up to heaven for supply of power as he delivered the word and then praying for the people afterwards, after he preached. And so it really gives a picture of how to saturate the entire process because I found with my interaction with pastors and myself, it's easy to kind of do like a baseball game, have a national anthem prayer at the beginning, seventh inning stretch prayer right before you get in the pulpit, and then breathe a sigh of relief when the game is over and get set to do it again. But Spurgeon, the way he walked with God enabled him to saturate all of that process, whatever group he was addressing, he was bathing that in prayer, meditation, and Scripture intake. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. So, I mean, you walk this through throughout the book. I mean, you know, one of your early chapters is on scrutinizing your schedule and really getting pastors to understand, you know, how does all of this actually work together? Not just to how do I get ready to deliver a sermon on Sunday, but how do we do this sort of integration? So maybe talk through that just a little bit, give people a glimpse of what you include in the book under that rubric of your schedule. Yes, I think one key for me that I've gleaned from Spurgeon is waking up every morning, looking in the mirror and knowing I am a man of God. I belong to him. I've been called by him, commissioned by him to be where I am doing what I'm doing. And and I am a man of God among all the other hats or titles I wear. You know, I have to have have that in place. Another thing about Spurgeon is he was very Christ-centered and he had an all-consuming love for Jesus that filled his sermons. And he I did a word search electronically. I didn't go through each page of books, but in his preaching, he, you find the name of Jesus in his 3500 sermons over 900 times. And then the title of Christ, like I can't remember the number now, but it's just even greater than that. So in his living and preaching, he stayed very focused on Christ and seeking to please him. And then I think one of the keys that I think is most helpful is just a desperate dependence upon God because of his visibility. He was fighting doctrinal battles. Most of his ministry had health issues, bouts of depression. And in the midst of all that, it created this sense of dependence upon God, his lack of formal theological education, which he had, you know, a large library and everything. He was an avid reader, but just that desperate dependence upon God. And I think if there's one takeaway as far as our schedule, it would be, do I really believe John 15, 5?

If I abide in him and he abides in me, I bear much fruit, but without him, I can do nothing. I think I've been guilty at times of just trying to do something, and sometimes that something is more visible, and I assume it's more valuable, but the most valuable is what Christ did daily, spending time with the Lord, with the Father, and cultivating intimacy. And so Spurgeon really followed the example of Christ. And he preached whole sermons about how Christ preached, whole sermons about how Christ prayed. He was a lifelong student of the praying, preaching of Jesus, his leadership, and I think just anchoring our lives to the person of Christ and allowing that to be the life-giving source of our ministry in our schedule, where I don't plan it and then ask God to bless it, but I'm seeking direction from him, even as I plan my schedule. Do you, I mean, I sort of hate to admit this, but that feels so counterintuitive to what we usually do, right? I mean, usually we, I guess you could almost phrase it as, you lean back on your training, you don't lean back on Christ, which is sort of a crass way to put it, but I think that's the way most of us actually think about it, right? You know, I've got years under my belt of studying the scriptures, and so I know that I can put this lesson together in, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And so then I arrange my schedule like that, but what I hear you advocating for is, I mean, John 15, 5, the most important thing we can do is abide in him. And if we're cutting him out of the process, we're really not doing anything. That's the general idea. It seems so counterintuitive. I mean, when you present that to pastors, as you've gotten feedback, even from students or folks who have read the book, how do they respond to that? Does it feel unnatural to them? Do they feel like that's an area where they don't understand how to do that? Yes, and so the book really has been helpful at that point because it's a step-by-step process. There's no way you could apply the whole ivory principle in the book at once, but we've also developed some sermon preparation worksheets that kind of keeps you focused on that process after you're acquainted with it in the book. But it does feel counterintuitive because our whole preparation process, and when you think about it, Jesus prepared 30 years for three years of ministry. We prepare three years for 30 years of ministry. And so I've just found that kind of mind-boggling that I think in three years I can be prepared for 30 years of ministry, but Jesus took 30 years preparing for those three. And I think coming to understand that I'm to love God with all my heart and all my mind and keeping that in proper balance because the two travel together, but I think we tend to lean in one of the two ways. Either we have a very devotional-type, heart-centered walk with God or a mental focus. I find that in our church staff. We balance each other out because we're constantly balancing each other. And so I think it comes back to that first and greatest commandment to love God with everything you are and not segment your life. And of course, lead with your heart, but love him with your mind. But I think there's that tendency to jump out on our own and kind of get lost in it. And I've been preparing sermons for, I started preaching 45 years ago. I've been preaching in the pulpit weekly. Hopefully you spell that W-E-E-K-L-Y, but weekly for 41 years as a pastor. And people say, well, I guess now you don't have to write sermons. You have a storehouse. Well, the reality is I do every week because I know if I ever stop disciplining myself to spend that time with the Lord, I'll miss out on some intimacy with him, some interaction with him wrestling over scripture. And when you think the Holy Spirit has inspired the word, why would we not consult the author of the book? It's not what I bring to the Bible, it's what the Bible brings to me. You know, just, it's a kind of a challenge to retrain the brain, you know. Well, and even when you, even when you just think about the hermeneutical spiral, right? I mean, you almost have to revisit the text. You can't lean back on something that you thought you knew, you know, 10 years ago because you're 10 years different than you were back then. You know, you're 10 years worth of experience with God than you were back then. And so chances are you're going to see something in that text that you didn't see before. You're going to approach it with a different posture. It's going to give you a slightly different insight on that text. And the Holy Spirit's going to sort of illumine that text for you in a different way. And so circling back, this is something I think I was always so frustrated when I'd hear folks say, well, you're, you're young, you're young, you're young. And it's like, yeah, I may be young, but I kind of know what I'm doing. But I think now that I've gotten older, I sit back and I go, no, I was young. Right. Like, yeah, I mean, you just don't always have the lived experiences that we go through. They do tend to form and shape us as God participates in our lives with us. And then we go back to the biblical text. It's like, oh, I was absolutely missing that. Right. So it's actually heartening to hear you say, like, after 41 years, you're still, you're not doing canned sermons. You're always coming back for that fresh word, which is, I think, fantastic. Yeah. And Spurgeon said, as long as you preach the Bible, you never run out of material to preach. That's right. Like you said, that verse that even if you preached on it last week, if you preach on again this week, it probably would have a new freshness to it because the word is living and active and, you know, it works in our hearts in a variety of ways. Yeah. Well, let me switch gears. I think one of the chapters that that struck me in the book most and that I found most interesting was the stirring the soil chapter. You know, I've reflected on that, you know, the parable of the soils and those kinds of things for a number of years, and I found that chapter really helpful. So can you talk a little bit about what you mean by stirring the soil and give folks an understanding of of what it looks like to actually do that? Yes. Spurgeon was a great student of the Puritans and the Puritans were known as physicians of the soul. So they were very in touch with the human condition, experiential religion, as opposed to a lifeless liturgy. And so he read them a lot. And I think that's where this came from. There's not a specific point I can point to. But the whole idea of of praying for people in the categories of the soil in the parable of the sower and the seed has revolutionized my way of looking at my congregation that, you know, some falls on good ground. It produces fruit. Some looks like it's gonna happen, and then the cares of this life choke it out. We think that's going to happen initially, but sometimes that happens after decades in a person's life having a false understanding of of their spirituality. And and so coming to the understanding that it it's it's my job to have the seed of the word of God to bring to that soil and trust God to do with that soil what he wants it to do, wants to do. But part of the process may be removing some of the rocks of arguments for that to enter the soil and and praying that God would stir the hearts and prepare them for the seed. And then praying after you preach that there wouldn't be a crop failure, that that would produce fruit in their lives. And so when Spurgeon was preaching, even he would break out into these prayers. You know, he did that, I think, over 500 times. He breaks out into a prayer and then continues preaching. It's not like he says, let us pray, bow our heads. He just prays and then goes on and he's praying about the effect of the word on the hearers and on his heart because he was consumed with the idea he was sowing seed in a soil where it would either produce fruit or it wouldn't. And.

So the whole idea of being prayerful about the soil and stirring the soil of your own heart, stirring the soil through prayer has really helped me to see my preaching task differently. Because when you think about, I'm gonna have elementary aged kids there, I'm gonna have senior adults there, and how in the world can you address a group like that? Nobody has to do that except for preachers. And the reality is we can't, but the Holy Spirit knows each heart. He knows each place that seeds me. I mean, it's really amazing to think that God could use us with the circumstances, the variety of circumstances, ages and stages and seasons and reasons that are there. And somehow he casts the seed through us. And so just being prayerful about that soil and understanding that part of what happens is you're not through when you preach, because as a teacher or a pastor, the interaction with the soil of that person's heart and personal conversations, prayer for them, praying with them. There's a variety of ways that we continue to water and God brings the harvest. But the whole idea of soil has been a very fascinating thought for me. That's fantastic. And so Spurgeon uses this as well. He talks through this in his work and sort of plays with that parable in this way. Yes, and in his sermons, you do understand he was a student of scripture, but he was also a student of the human heart. And he wasn't just theoretically doing what we call a data dump of information, but his target was the heart of his hearers because of that sense of it being the soil in which the seed was planted. Yeah, the chapter struck me because I've always thought through that parable. I don't know that I've ever written on it like this, but the way I've thought through it and reflected on it is that the church needs to be the one of the aims of the church needs to be to produce good soil. And we need to be pulling weeds and taking rocks out as much as we possibly can and not adding those to the soil, which many times it feels like we do. And so I think seeing it applied the way you do, the way you talk about it in the chapter, specific to preaching and how you think about that in terms of the holistic sort of ministry, even the way you've talked about it here, that holistic ministry that you do with people, not simply through preaching, but then after preaching and during the rest of their lives, is to help them be the good soil, help kind of churn their heart up and so that you're removing those weeds, you're taking those rocks out and you're trying to get their hearts to be the good soil that they can hear the word of God. I think it's really fantastic. Well, thanks. Yeah, and it's really helped me a lot. John Owen, the great Puritan, he did some work on that as well about the soils of the heart and the different kinds of hearers that will be there. Which gives you some focus in interceding for those to whom you're going to preach. Which, you know, for some, that's been a new idea that, you know, just praying a scatter, covering of prayer for those who will hear rather than, okay, there are going to be people there who are in this situation. Father, please apply this specifically there and, you know, thinking through to whom you're going to preach and for whom you're preaching, you know, for the Lord and to people that he's intimately involved with. When you talked about it, you know, you've got the young kids and the grandparents all in the same room and the pastor has to sort of try to convey this word so that it, quote unquote, hits all those targets, which is impossible, right? And I tend to agree. I mean, except in some rare instances, I suppose you could have something that would work for all those targets. But how do you start, how does this approach, Spurgeon's approach, start to reorient your thinking about that? So, you know, my tendency is to see this as, you know, you've been through the book writing process, obviously. And so I'm sure you, at some point along the way, were asked the question of who's your target market? And, you know, you have to answer like, who's this, who are you writing for? And those are good questions. They do help to sharpen and narrow sort of who you're aiming at and it can shape the way you write. But in the context of a sermon, you don't get to choose who you aim at. You sort of speak to the congregation who's there. And so how does this create a different posture for that? Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah. One thing that Spurgeon and D.L. Moody had in common was they spoke in the common language of the people. And Moody more so than Spurgeon, I think, was criticized for that. But both of them received criticism for the common language in which they spoke. And one thing that Spurgeon was very gifted at was word pictures, similes, and things like that where he helped to turn their ears into eyes, so to speak. And so I had an experience in my first pastorate that really is still shaping some of what I do. And I was a single man. I got married within the next year, but I was discipling our teenagers at this rural church. And I would preach on Sunday morning, then we would go have lunch, and then we would come back and meet at this fellowship hall. And I had the spiritual journey notebooks. They were taking sermon notes in, and we'd discuss the sermon. I was discipling them, I thought, but they were really Educating me as to their reception of what I had said. And they'd say, well, what about point number four? And they'd say, you didn't have a fourth point. And I'd say, yes, I did. No. Did anybody else see a fourth point in that? No. Or why were you trying to say here? That made no sense. And so being with junior high and high school kids, it really pulled me out of preaching to my professors. And that's part of our theological training. It takes us a while to stop preaching to our professors and really preach to the people that are in the room. And I think the internet and being Facebook live or whatever puts pressure on us because our sermons never be perfect, but they're going to be permanent. And we can be more conscious of the people outside the room than people in the room. And so I've always tried to put it down around the fifth, sixth grade level. If I can explain it to that level of a mind, then hopefully the adults are as smart as a fifth grader. Yeah. So if I can illustrate this, not that I'm dumbing down the scripture, but what terms would need to be defined for a fifth grader? What's a word picture that would describe this for a fifth grader? And even with my boys, I would tell them some concepts and then get them to explain it back to me. And I would get some great insight there. So I think a lot of it's knowing your people and interacting with them. So tonight, I'll be with the room full of elementary aged kids and we're going to be, I'm helping, I'm not leading it, but we're doing Bible drill and they're learning books in the Bible and they're reading scripture, processing it. And I'm there watching this. And, you know, just never get too big for the small people as in children. And, you know, one of my heroes, Mr. Rogers, just how he could take those.

concepts and put them into young minds, and so I think that's been a journey for me to try to, you know, keep it simple, and I think that's one thing Spurgeon did, and the more you're focused on Christ, the more, you don't preach a simplistic message, but it has a simple focus of the gospel and the Scripture. And it is interesting, I think, I've done public, but I've never been a pastor, and so I don't preach weekly, and whenever I'm asked to do a sermon, like at my church or whatever, I'm always like, you know I'm not a preacher, I'm more of a teacher. But even when I get up there, I do really try hard to kind of give those word pictures for folks so they don't get lost, right, and I don't lose them. It's probably more the better way, I don't lose them because my tendency is to be a geek and, you know, do the academic thing and teach. Right. In that context, that's not what you're supposed to be doing, and so I've had to learn to sort of bridge that, bridge between the two so that at the end of a sermon people have something that they can take home with them. My pastor is far more adept at it than I am, and he does a fantastic job. And I think, just like what you're saying, he brings it down to a level where everyone in the room understands exactly the point he's trying to illustrate and just does a fabulous job of pulling out a really difficult concept, something that could be looked at for hours and hours and hours, and I mean there's, you know, whole monographs written on it, and he can illustrate it with just, you know, in two minutes, and you get it, which I think is just a, it's a skill set and it's, I think it has to be some sort of a, you know, God-given gift, honestly. Yes. Well, hey, the last thing I really wanted to ask about before we kind of wrap up, you have these two chapters, one on the Spirit and one on I think it was silencing the satanic, I think is the name of the chapter. Yes. And so you have the one on the Spirit and then we have the one on silencing the satanic. And I was reading through those, and like I said, I've done some work on D.L. Moody, and when I read his work on the Holy Spirit, it has a whole different flavor than anything I read in contemporary work on the Holy Spirit. Yes. You know, this is pre-charismatic wars, this is pre, you know, sort of cessation of gifts and all these kind of conversations that we sort of deal with now. And there was, there's a sense in which, and I don't know whether I really mean it this way, but it's the best way I can articulate it. There's a purity and experiential sort of sense of the Holy Spirit in one's life that I don't often see today. You know what I mean? It isn't expressed that way today. You catch it in certain people, maybe, but it isn't, it just doesn't feel the same. When they're writing about it, it really feels like they're experiencing it. Yes. When we write about it or when authors write about it today, it does sort of feel like they're, they're thinking about it, but it isn't necessarily, you get the sense that they're really feeling that empowerment. Right. And so here's my question. These are two really, I think, interconnected and intertwined issues. This, this enters the realm of that sort of spiritually unseen sort of empowerment or hindrances. And so I'm wondering how you frame this for pastors who maybe aren't really even thinking about being empowered by the Holy Spirit, or if they are, it's more of a passing idea and academic thought. And then that resistance of Satan, how I would think is a corollary, you know, is that if, if you're not really being empowered by the Spirit, you're just kind of, yes, I know the Holy Spirit's working in me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That sort of yada, yada, yada moment. Do you have that same yada, yada, yada moment with silencing of Satan? So, yeah, if you could just talk through that a little bit, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I think the key to victory in our lives, Paul said in Galatians 5, 16, walk in the Spirit that you should not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Yeah. And, you know, allowing the Holy Spirit to fill us and to walk in Him and with Him. And without the Holy Spirit being actively focused on in our ministries, we're left with a sense that we're doing something for God. But when we begin to rely on the Holy Spirit, it's God doing something through us. And in order for Him to do something through us, some things have to happen in us and to us. And a lot of what happens in us occurs because of what's happened to us. And so Spurgeon, you know, was given to depression, but out of those seasons, he would come back with some nuggets of understanding of the ways of God having dealt with his own soul and the struggle there. And so I think as the Holy Spirit works through us and we've allowed extremes to rob us of that because we, what you hear about the most are the extremes, either the extreme of mystical, magical kind of stuff or a strict cessationist where the Holy Spirit is made to look like He doesn't do anything anymore when the Bible is referred to as the sword of the Spirit. You know, it's not like I take His sword and I wield it. The Holy Spirit takes His sword and He does surgery on me first and then through the power that He has through us. And He's not a power to be used. He's a person to be known. And when the Holy Spirit's at work, when there's a divine operation, we say there's demonic opposition, so you're in a battle. You're behind enemy lines in this world. And the one thing Satan wants to do is knock out your communication with the headquarters of heaven and with the indwelling Holy Spirit within you. If he can keep you from communicating, you know, in Desert Storm, that was the first line of attack was the Tomahawk missiles to knock out all communication and isolate. And I think that's part of the fallout in ministry is not having that open communication with God to where it's not so much about what I say to Him, but what He says to me through His word and by me understanding His ways. And so every Sunday I do something that Spurgeon did. It's not the exact statement, but he wrote prayers on his sermons. And we find that some of the lost sermons where he will say he referred to himself as God's worm, you know, please empower your worm today or whatever. So I always write before I get up to preach, oh, Father, unction, please. I want the Holy Spirit to just really work here. I'll write a little prayer. Father, please fill the white spaces because it's those white spaces in the message where God can do the most work at times in people's hearts, those pauses and the place where he fills the blanks. And so it is a spiritual battle when you get in the pulpit. If you get in the pulpit without a sense of Holy Spirit, you're like a prisoner of war almost because you're neutralized. And I think I described this in the book, but it's like on Sunday mornings I'll wake up and Satan's there accusing me. You know, who are you to preach? Who are you to try to help these people? And the reality is I'm asking the same question because it's only by God's grace. So I have to agree, but I push through that and I come from a point of I can't, I can't wait to get up there and preach. And then after I preach, guess who's there stroking my ego saying, man, what a great job. You could do that every week without even praying or studying. You got it. And the reality is he'll get us with criticism or compliments. But if I'm relying on the Holy Spirit, I come out of the pulpit drained knowing I was used by God, not in some weird way, but the Holy Spirit carried a conversation from my heart to their hearts, not just my head to their heads. And with Holy Spirit in that battle for people's souls, Satan doesn't, he doesn't care if we communicate head to head, but it's when it becomes heart to heart from the Holy Spirit pouring that in. And so I think those two chapters are very key. Now, there's a story told to Spurgeon walking up the steps to his pulpit. And I, I have traced it back pretty far.

I've never seen where Spurgeon told the story, but where he would say with each step, I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit. But I think we have to preach with that sense of understanding that apart from the Spirit using his sword through me, I really have nothing to say. I love that. I mean, I think just even that first part where you're talking about the Holy Spirit is not a power to be used, but a person to be known. I think that's something for us to grab hold of and not let go of in today's world, whether you're in the pulpit or whether you're just going to work. You know, the Holy Spirit is a person to be known and to think about the presence of God in our lives and dwelling us, living within us. It's just absolutely crucial. So I think that's a great point for us to end on. There's so much more in the book, everybody. I'd really recommend, whether you're a preacher or not, I actually think this is a great book just to glean some insights about what Spurgeon's process was that people could actually apply to their own lives. Obviously, it's written for folks who are going to be preaching, but as somebody who studies an awful lot, who does podcasts and those kind of things, which aren't technically preaching, I know I gleaned an awful lot from this. So I'd really recommend just Spurgeon, the prayer-powered pulpit of the Prince of Preachers, available on Amazon. Anywhere else you'd like me to route folks to, Keeney? You can get it there. You can get it through Paradigm. Yeah, you know, some people have ordered it from me. They wanted me to sign it or whatever, and, you know, I'm not a celebrity or anything, but sometimes people want that, so they could order it from Paradigm. Very cool. I even found out it's available on Amazon UK, so if you have some people in the UK that are listening, that's been a blessing. Yeah, I've been asked why it was so narrowly titled, because Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, businessmen, a variety of people have said, I've gleaned a lot just in my own life. I wanted to really aim at pastors, because, you know, the two goals of my life right now are I want to live till I die, because I've seen a lot of people stop living. And then I want to finish strong, and I hope this is like a baton in the hand of a person heading for that last lap or even their first lap, that, okay, this is going to set the stage for finishing strong by walking with the Lord. Well, for what it's worth, I thought the narrow focus actually was helpful, even though I gleaned things from it other than being a preacher. And so I think it really kept things very clean and simple, you know, and so I understood what the concepts were. I didn't need to convolute it by thinking, you know, all of these different areas that it could apply to. I could do that work on my own. And I think having that narrow focus and really keeping it centered the way you did actually helped the book. So I think it was great, but I definitely recommend it. And Keeney, just thanks for your insights. Thanks for your work. And thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Sure. It was my honor. Thank you. All right. All right, everybody. Hey, take care, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. No matter what you're going through, you are not alone. Sis, if you've experienced pain in your father-daughter relationship, I want you to know that you are loved and seen. I'm Kia Stevens, host of the Hope for Women with Father Wounds podcast. And I created my show to help you exchange your father wounds for the love of God the Father. Join me for encouragement, wisdom, and scripture. Just search Hope for Women with Father Wounds on lifeaudio.com or wherever you get your podcasts.