Quotes about Teaching

Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach, only how to pray.

He chiefly used when speaking of the relations of the disciples to Himself was: Follow me.

However we study or delight in the letter of the Word, it has no saving or sanctifying power without the Holy Spirit. Human wisdom and human will, however great their efforts, cannot command that power. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. It is only as the Holy Spirit teaches you as you read, only as the Gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, that you will be given, along with every command, the strength also to obey it.

To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to man. Not power with men, but power with God is the first thing. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.

There is a twofold use of prayer: the one is to obtain strength and blessing for our own life; the other is intercession - the higher, true glory of prayer for which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching. This is where prayer is the royal power of a child of God who exercises in heaven on behalf of others and even of the kingdom.

Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love.

Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well, but much of praying well.

Let us learn the lesson: the highest holiness is the deepest humility.

The two must be united — the Word and the Spirit — because only in these can we know for sure the will of God and learn to pray according to it. In the heart, the Word and the Spirit must meet; it is only by such indwelling that we can experience their teaching.

The power of the church truly to bless, rests on intercession — asking and receiving heavenly gifts to carry to other men. Because this is so, it is no wonder that where — owing to lack of teaching or spiritual insight, trust in our own diligence and effort, the influence of the world and the flesh, and that we work more than we pray — the presence and power of God are not seen in our work as we would wish.

And if he enjoys the reading of the Word little, that is the reason he should read it much, for the frequent reading of the Scriptures creates a delight in them. The more we read them, the more we desire to do so. Above all, he should seek to have it settled in his own mind that God alone by His Spirit can teach him, and therefore, as he asks God for blessings, it serves him to seek God's blessing prior to reading and while reading.

The teaching of the Spirit — not without or against the Word but as something above and beyond it and in addition to it, without which we cannot see God's will — is the heritage of every believer. It is through the Word and the Word alone that the Spirit teaches, applying the general principles or promises to our special need.