The Real Sermon Is Made in the Closet

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. ACTS 6:4

Power Through Prayer was written for preachers, and it is one of the most uncomfortable books a minister can read. Its original title, Preacher and Prayer, states its subject exactly. Its argument is that the power of a sermon is not made in the study, still less in the pulpit, but on the preacher’s knees. “The real sermon is made in the closet,” Bounds wrote. “Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.”

This chapter is about ministers, but not only for them. Everything Bounds said about the preacher applies, in its measure, to every Christian who speaks for God to anyone — a parent, a teacher, a friend.

The man is the message

Bounds believed that a sermon could never rise higher than the person who preached it. The preacher is not a loudspeaker for a message that exists apart from him. What he is flows into everything he says. “It takes twenty years to make a sermon,” he wrote, “because it takes twenty years to make the man.”

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:5–6

He took that text as the title of one of his chapters. There is preaching, he said, that gives life, and there is preaching that kills. The preaching that kills may be orthodox, orderly and eloquent. It may even move people to tears. But it comes from the preacher’s own resources rather than from God, and it leaves hearts as hard as it found them. The difference is not in the words but in what lies behind them: a man who has been broken before God and emptied of self-reliance, or a man who has not.

Unction

The word Bounds used for the difference is unction, the anointing of the Holy Spirit on the preacher and the message. He devoted three chapters to it and admitted it was almost impossible to define. You cannot manufacture it. You can counterfeit it, with emotion or performance, but the counterfeit leaves no lasting mark. Where it is present, the same truths that were dull in another man’s mouth break hearts and change lives.

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. 1 JOHN 2:20

His conclusion was blunt: “Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching unction.” It is not a gift received once and kept forever. It is renewed as it was first given, by continual asking. He compared unction kept without prayer to the manna the Israelites tried to store overnight: it spoiled.

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 1 CORINTHIANS 2:4

The apostles’ priority

Bounds loved to point to Acts 6. When the young Church in Jerusalem faced a crisis over the care of widows, the apostles did not dismiss the need; they appointed others to meet it. But they refused to let even good and urgent work crowd out their first calling. They would give themselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word — and prayer came first. Bounds observed that the apostles made a business of praying, putting time and fervour and perseverance into it.

He was sharp about how little many ministers of his day actually prayed. He pictured the preacher whose only praying was a few words at the bedside before sleep and a few hasty snatches in the morning, and he set that beside the long hours of the great men of God. He thought such thin praying was hardly better than none, and in one of his harder sentences he said that little praying might even be worse than no praying, because it salves the conscience while achieving nothing.

Brethren, pray for us. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:25

The preacher must be prayed for

One of the most humane chapters in Power Through Prayer turns from the preacher’s praying to the congregation’s. Bounds noted how often Paul, the greatest of apostles, begged the churches to pray for him — for utterance, for boldness, for deliverance, for an open door. If Paul needed the prayers of ordinary believers, how much more does any minister today?

Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; ROMANS 15:30

He set two propositions side by side that he said must never be divorced: the preacher must pray, and the preacher must be prayed for. And he asked the reader directly whether he prayed for his own minister in secret. Those who do, he said, are to the preacher what Aaron and Hur were to Moses, holding up his hands in the battle.

And they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. EXODUS 17:12

The book ends with a line that sums up its hope: “A praying pulpit will beget praying pews.” People learn to pray from those who lead them. A church rarely prays more than its ministers do.

Where this must be read with care

Bounds is a physician, and his medicine is strong. Three cautions will help it do good rather than harm.

First, he sometimes writes as if prayer were the only thing a minister needs, and study almost a distraction. That is not quite his view — he quotes with approval Luther’s saying that he who has prayed well has studied well — but the reader should not take him to despise learning. Paul told Timothy to give attendance to reading as well as to prayer. The answer is not less study but study bathed in prayer.

Second, he speaks as though unction were always visible and results always follow. They do not. Faithful, praying ministers have laboured for years with little outward fruit, and others with little prayer have drawn crowds. God’s timing is His own, and the measure of a ministry is faithfulness, not success.

Third, many ministers who read Bounds already feel they fail at everything. For them his pages can become one more burden. The answer to that is not to stop praying but to remember that the One to whom we pray is the Good Shepherd, who knows the weakness of His under-shepherds and does not break the bruised reed. The closet is not a court where we are judged. It is the place where we are fed.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. If you preach or teach, keep a record this week of how much time you spend preparing your material and how much praying over it and over the people. Let the comparison speak to you.

2. Before your next time of speaking for God, however informal, pray first for the hearers by name, and then for yourself.

3. Pray for your own minister or pastor by name every day this week — for his or her soul, family and preaching.

4. Tell your pastor, briefly and without fuss, that you are praying for them.

5. If you are weary in ministry, read Isaiah 42:3 and bring your weariness to God rather than your performance.

A PRAYER

Lord of the harvest, You have given Your Church preachers and teachers, and You have told us to pray for them. Forgive me for criticising them more than I have prayed for them.

Anoint those who speak Your word. Let them come to the pulpit from the closet, with their hearts warmed by Your presence and their lips touched by Your Spirit.

And whenever I speak for You, to one person or to many, let it not be the letter that kills but the Spirit that gives life.

Make our pulpits praying pulpits, and our pews praying pews, for the glory of Your name. Amen.