Dec 30, 2018 - 
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Reformed Experiential Preaching
by Joel Beeke
9 Points:
- Tests genuine experience by the standard of biblical truth idealistically, realistically, optimistically.
- Draws lines distinguishing between believers and unbelievers.
- Makes frequent and wise application of truth to life.
- Balances biblical, doctrinal, experiential and practical elements.
- Cultivate a life of communion with our God and Savior.
- Builds experience upon the foundation of Holy Scripture, God’s Word.
- Goes beyond contemporary superficiality into the deep wisdom of old paths.
- Offers food to satisfy the new spiritual sense of the believers’ souls.
- Touches the heart with a bitterness of sin and the sweetness of grace.
Reformed Experiential Preaching applies the truth of God to the hearts of people to show how things ought to go, and do go, and ultimately will go in the Christian experience, with respect to God, and his neighbors (i.e. family, church, world around him).
Reformed experiential preacher receives God’s Word into his heart and then preaches it to the minds, the hearts and the lives of his hearers.
Note 1: Head-knowledge of God is not useless but necessary. We need to know the truth.
Note 2: We don’t change people by our experiences as preachers. Holy Spirit alone changes people.
Every revival throughout church history begins in the hearts of preachers, who were set aflame with the truth of God’s Word and preached it with passion and conviction; then the Holy Spirit who prepared that minister’s heart, use that minister, then other ministers, and then other ministers got impacted, and use those ministers to bring from heart to heart to the people, and brought waves of revival.
The act of preaching is a living bond (connection) between preacher and hearers. The bond that you cannot leave your church is that there are hungry people who want to be fed and grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.