Article Library

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By Pastor Chuck Swindoll

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Intensifying Intimacy

“I want you to stay in love with Christ. I want you to have such an intimacy in your relationship with Him that you can, without even bowing your head or closing your eyes, just talk to Him. Just connect with Him. Just pour out your soul, your fears, and your heartaches and your uneasiness, your disappointments and your offenses and your mistakes and your failures and your successes and your great grades and your poor grades, and all through it, that your intimacy with Him just intensifies, gets deeper and deeper, so that when you leave [seminary], you don’t leave loving the text of Scripture. You leave loving the person of Scripture, the person of Scripture who loved you and gave Himself for you and loved you enough to give you His Book.”

What Matters is Your Love

“Nothing is more important than you’re having this passion for Christ. And then when you walk away, you’re on a cloud of excitement and enthusiasm, wherever God may take you. Doesn’t matter what money you make; it doesn’t matter what fame you may have. Doesn’t matter how large the ministry grows. It does not matter. All of that is up to Him. What matters is your love.”

Don’t Let Your Love Grow Cold

“When I read different individual’s rendering of this statement in Revelation 2:4, I get an even better grasp of it. A. T. Robertson: ‘This early love, proof of their new life in Christ, had cooled off in spite of their doctrinal purity.’ If you don’t watch it, it’s going to cool off, and your zeal for the lost is not going to be as intense as it was in your university years. If you don’t watch it, your affection for Him will get academic. And you’ll know the text so well, but your love will have become cold.”

The Ephesian Church’s Cooling Love

“By the way, 30 years had passed since Paul had written them that last line in the Letter to the Ephesians. Don’t know the last time you glanced at it, but that last line refers to their loving Him in a deep love. Thirty years have passed, and they’ve already begun to cool off, same church. Many of them remembering the voice of Paul and John, and Aquilla and Priscilla and those who had built their lives into them, and they’re now standing for the faith. They have a fortitude, but they don’t have a deep, intimate affection for the Savior. Don’t lose that.”

Wait Upon Him

“He won’t speed up to walk with you. He won’t scream and shout. You’ll have to be quiet. That’s why the psalmist says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ You’ll have to have some hours where you deliberately and when you intentionally simply bow before Him and wait upon Him and pour out your soul to Him. He won’t work in the framework we establish. We must adapt to His pace, style.”

Additional Resources

First, sign up for our Chuck’s Insights on Ministry email where we bring you his best thoughts on preaching, leadership, and ministry each week. By signing up, you’ll instantly receive a one-page checklist with 20 preaching insights from Chuck. See this page’s sidebar.

Second, check out our new Preach The Word articles and video series on YouTube where we’re teaching Chuck’s best insights on this important calling.

Third, listen to Chuck’s messages to those in ministry through our Seminary Chapels page. For decades, he offered students at Dallas Theological Seminary his best thoughts on church leadership and ministry. Now, we have put them at your finger tips. Also, you can find them through this YouTube playlist we created for you.

Fourth, if you don’t own a copy of Chuck’s book on preaching, Saying It Well, we highly recommend you add it to your library. It’s his preaching memoir that is also like a practical preaching manual. You won’t be able to put it down.

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