PRAYING WHILE PREACHING.
By John Bunyan
WHEN I have been preaching, I thank God, my heart hath often—all the time of this and the other exercise—with great earnestness cried to God that he would make the word effectual to the salvation of the soul; still being grieved lest the enemy should take the word away from the conscience, and so it should become unfruitful; wherefore I have labored so to speak the word as that thereby, if it were possible, the sin and person guilty might be particularized by it. I have observed that a word, cast in by the by, hath done more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken besides. And when I have done the exercise, it hath gone to my heart to think the words should now fall as rain on stony places, still wishing from my heart, oh that they who have heard me speak this day did but see, as I do, what sin, death, hell, and the curse of God are; and also what the grace and love and mercy of God are, through Christ, to men in such a case as they are who are yet estranged from him. And, indeed, I did often say in my heart before the Lord that if I should be hanged up presently before their eyes, and it would be a means to awaken them and confirm them in the truth, I gladly should be contented. I have been in my preaching, especially when I have been engaged in the doctrine of life, by Christ, without works, as if an angel of God had stood at my back to encourage me. Oh, it hath been with such power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul, while I have been laboring to unfold it, to demonstrate it, and to fasten it upon the consciences of others, that I could not be contented with saying, I believe, and am sure. Methought I was more than sure—if it be lawful thus to express myself—that those things which then I asserted were true.—John Bunyan.