Power of the Word

My senior pastor, Josh Moody, once said in a sermon that a bible-preaching church is "like a piece of apple pie with whipped cream on top." I love this simile not merely because apple pie is my favorite dessert (especially from Grand Lux Cafe), but because bible-preaching churches are becoming more and more of a rarity. I strongly believe in a pulpit that simply preaches Christ-crucified from scripture every week with the confidence that God will give faith. There is no burden to persuade and no burden of life and death, but rather, a joy in knowing God is sovereign in calling His children to faith by the preaching and hearing of His Word.

The following quote comes from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer...

"The Word of God seeks a Church to take unto itself. It has its being in the Church. It enters the Church by its own self-initiated movement. It is wrong to suppose that there is so to speak a Word on the one hand and a Church on the other, and that it is the task of the preacher to take that Word into his hands and move it so as to bring it into the Church and apply it to the Church's needs. On the contrary, the Word moves of its own accord, and all the preacher has to do is to assist that movement and try to put no obstacles in its path. The Word comes forth to take men to itself; the apostles knew that and it was the burden of their message. They had seen the Word of God for themselves, they had seen how it came and took flesh, and in this flesh the whole human race. Now the burden of their testimony was simply this - the Word of God had become flesh, it had come to take sinners to itself, to forgive and to sanctify. It is this same Word which now makes its entry into the Church. This Word makes flesh, this Word which already bears the whole human race, can no longer exist without the humanity it has assumed. Furthermore, when this Word comes, the Holy Spirit comes, showing to Christians, both individually and corporately, the gifts of the incarnate Christ to man. He produces faith in his hearers, that they may discern in the preaching the entry of Jesus Christ. He opens their eyes to see Christ coming into their midst in the power of his Body to tell us that he has received us and will receive us again to-day."