Dependent, Desperate Preaching

John Piper on the preacher's dependence on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching:

All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation. You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other. You go to your study and look down at your pitiful manuscript, and you kneel down and cry, "O God, this is so weak! Who do I think I am? What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death and the fragrance of life to life (2 Cor. 2:16). My God, who is sufficient for these things?"

—The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 41-42.