Trials create a deep and profound need for wisdom.  Whatever adverse circumstance you face, there is, more than likely, a desire for answers, a need for direction, a longing for resolution.  Have you ever met someone going through a difficult season only to say things like, “I just don’t know what I am going to do” or “I need some answers?” Such perplexity is not foreign to adversity.  Mel Lawrenz said, “No day should pass without asking God for wisdom.  To look for wisdom only sometimes is to risk foolishness most times.” To “risk foolishness” by not seeking wisdom …

With all the time-constraints that engulf the ministry, the preacher of God’s Word must be a good steward of his sermon preparation. If he is not, he will feel the crunch come Sunday. One of the reasons we have such powerless, anemic, insipid preaching in the pulpit is because we have such flippant, ill-managed, frivolous preparation in the study.  E.M. Bounds said it a little more tactfully, “A preacher who is enslaved in his study will be free in his pulpit.”

What may seem like 30 minutes of spoken exposition is really the manifestation of hours in books, in prayer, …