Who Are You To Preach!?

The "Doctor" answers:

I would not be a preacher of the gospel if it did not work. This is no profession to me. I did not come into a pulpit because I want a profession...

 

It is utterly unscriptural for a man to set himself up as a preacher...

A call generally starts in the form of a consciousness within one’s own spirit, an awareness of a kind of pressure being brought to bear … some disturbance in the realm of the spirit … that your mind is being directed to the whole question of preaching. You have not thought of it deliberately, you have not sat down in cold blood to consider possibilities, and then, having looked at several have decided to take this up. It is not that. This is something that happens to you; it is God dealing with you, and God acting upon you by His Spirit; it is something you become aware of rather than what you do. It is thrust upon you; it is presented to you and almost forced upon you constantly in this way....

I would say that the only man who is called to preach is the man who cannot do anything else, in the sense that he is not satisfied with anything else. This call to preach is so put upon him, and such pressure comes to bear upon him that he says, ‘I can do nothing else, I must preach...’

 

A man who feels that he is competent, and that he can do this easily, and so rushes to preach without any sense of fear or trembling, or any hesitation whatsoever, is a man who is proclaiming that he has never been ‘called’ to be a preacher....

I think the calling of a minister, a pastor, the greatest calling in the world. There is nothing I know of that is comparable to watching the Holy Spirit dealing with people, searching them, examining them, revealing truth to them, while you watch their growth and their development.*

*Sargent, T. (2007). Gems from Martyn Lloyd-Jones: An Anthology of Quotations from 'the Doctor' (229-230). Milton Keynes, England; Colorado Springs, CO; Hyderabad, AP: Paternoster.