Cultivating Gravity & Gladness in Preaching

John Piper's "The Supremacy of God in Preaching" is a compelling call to preach for God's glory. In it Piper offers these seven practical suggestions for cultivating gravity and gladness in preaching. (Note how different this council might be from popular, image-driven counsel, not to mention the very idea of cultivating gravity.)

1. Strive for practical, earnest, glad-hearted holiness in every area of your life. You can't be someone in the pulpit you aren't during the week.

2. Make your life - especially the life of your study - a life of constant communion with God in prayer. The aroma of God will not linger on a person who does not linger in the presence of God. Fruitful study and fervent prayer live and die together.

3. Read books written by those who bleed Bible when you prick them and who are blood-earnest about the truths they discuss.

4. Draw your mind often to the contemplation of death. Death and sickness have an amazing way of blowing the haze of triviality out of life and replacing it with the wisdom of gravity and gladness in the hope of resurrection of joy.

5. Consider the biblical teaching that as a preacher you will be judged with greater strictness. (James 3:1; Hebrews 13:17)

6. Consider the example of Jesus. He was as kind and tender and gentle as a righteous man could be...He never preached a careless sermon, and there is no record of a careless word.

7. Strive with all your strength to know God and to humble yourself under his mighty hand. (I Peter 5:6)