Nelson's Anual Preachers's Sourcebook Vol. 4 By O.S. Hawkins
I have always loved and honored those who are possessed and obsessed with a special and supernatural calling to preach the gospel.
Forever seared in my memory is my own personal call to ministry and the first sermon I ever preached. It was a hot and sultry summer evening, June 24, 1968, when I opened the Bible to Luke and preached on the subject of the cross to a group of rather rough-looking characters at the Union Gospel Mission.
My own preaching journey took me from those street corners and rescue missions of Fort Worth to the little town of Hobart on the Oklahoma plains, then to Ada, Oklahoma, and on to the Gold Coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and finally to the concrete canyons of downtown Dallas at the First Baptist Church.
Even today, in the midst of all of our technological sophistication, it is “still by the foolishness of preaching” that men and women are called to repentance.
The volume you now hold in your hands comes from the hearts and pens of some of the most God-blessed and able Bible expositors alive today. They are young like Jason Allen and a bit more mature like Erwin Lutzer.
Included are some of the most able theologians and culture warriors like Albert Mohler and Russell Moore as well as the most effective mass evangelists like Greg Laurie.
Among our contributors are college and seminary presidents, ethicists, pastors of all types and sizes of churches. All of them have a common thread woven throughout the fabric of their being—a rock-solid belief in the absolute trustworthiness of God’s infallible Word.
As a pastor/preacher myself for over four decades I know the constant cloud of pressure that hovers above the necessity of preparing multiple sermons every week. It never leaves us—ever! Thus, I want to raise high a red warning flag.
This volume is not designed to be a “Saturday night special” to whip out, load up, and fire on a Sunday morning. Volumes such as this should never be used as the only tool on the workbench of your personal study.
This sourcebook is designed to lie alongside all your other tools of word studies, exegesis, commentaries, analytical thought, and prayer that goes into the fully developed, prayed-over, and well-crafted sermon.
It is this editor’s prayer that your own messages will then exhort, encourage, and edify your hearers as these ideas are filtered through your own personality and accompanied by your own personal life illustrations. With that—let’s begin the journey.
