Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church
Mighty men of God are used mightily of God not because of their gifts or abilities but because of their mighty weakness. The power of God overcomes the weakness of His messengers so that the mighty gospel produces a miraculous, eternal, sovereign change in the hearts of God’s elect. Men of God must recover this absolute, necessary, and desperate dependence upon the sovereign power of the Spirit of God to produce any spiritual fruit in preaching. What is unction? Unction refers to the work of God the Spirit in attending the declared Word of God with supernatural power. In a word, God’s men have simple dependence upon spiritual aid. The man of God must desperately ask for and confidently trust in the Spirit of God to help him, empower him, fill him, and speak through Him so as to bring results in the preaching event.
But, one may ask, how does one get the unction of the Spirit? This essay provides four simple reminders to every preacher.
1. Pray earnestly!
Perhaps nothing brings the power of the Spirit of God upon the man of God who preaches the Word of God more than earnest, fervent, relentless, believing, and desperate prayers of the minister. Preaching is a supernatural event. It is, to be sure, quite odd. A man rises to a pulpit with a Book in his hand only to speak for the glory of God and to bring about change in his hearers and yet he himself, as the communicator, has no ability or power to produce any real, internal, heart-change in the hearers whatsoever. He preaches and calls on men to do something and yet he is utterly unable to accomplish that change as he utters, as he speaks, as he delivers, as he heralds. All this points to the absolute dependence upon the Spirit of God working through the message and using the very weakness of the man himself in delivering that divine truth so that souls are forever changed, hearts are immediately wooed to Christ’s loveliness, and lives are diligently changed into conformity of Jesus Christ. The man with the Word of God who speaks for God to people must pray earnestly as if any results that could possibly attend the preaching of the Word depend solely and fully on the Spirit. Because, it does. So, man of God, pray earnestly! In your prayers, pray! In your praying, pray! In your desperation, pray! Pray on!
2. Live Holy!
God uses holy men. He does not use strong men but He glorifies Himself and His majestic power in using weak men. But these weak men must be holy men. Just as a pipe must be clean in order for the water to purely pass through without being polluted, so the man of God, as God’s instrument, must be clean so that the pureness of the Word would pass through without being impotent. God chooses to use holy messengers. He does not need more men; He uses pure men. God does not ask for myriads of helpers to assist with the preaching of the Word; God takes His Word and entrusts it to seriously pious and consistently holy men with an indomitable craving for holiness and with a relentless pursuit of Christlikeness out of sheer love for the Triune God. The man who accomplishes great things is always a pure man. God does not use hypocrites to preach the Word and produce His work for long. How does a man of God preach with unction and with the anointing of God’s Spirit? He must be a pure, holy, blameless, above-reproach man. Man of God: live purely! Flee from sin! Fly to Christ! Abstain from impurities!
3. Seek Others' Intercession!
To get the unction of the Spirit, ministers of God must seek the intercessory aid of other believers who seek God and pray to God on his behalf. Paul did this frequently. He would ask believers to pray for him and to ask for an open door. He would beg churches to pray that he would speak with boldness and go forth with God’s power and speak God’s message the way that it ought to be declared. He sought the churches to help him in his Spirit-endowed power. To get unction in the preaching ministry, men of God must entreat his people to labor diligently, believingly, daily, and specifically in prayer. The power of ministry comes from dependence on prayer. Praying to God and begging for the Spirit of God produces supernatural fruit as God works through the message (and in spite of the messenger) to the hearers. Thus, if a man aspires to a real Spiritual anointing in his ministry, let him humbly, honestly, and desperately beg for believers to intercede on his behalf before the throne of grace in the time of need.
4. Again—Ask earnestly!
The Spirit does not attend the Word preached when the preachers have not asked for supernatural enabling and grace. The Spirit does not bring eternal, effectual, powerful results in ministries where prayer is not central. To refuse to pray proves the arrogance and haughtiness of the minister. To pray in desperation is urgent! To pray with confidence is comforting. To pray with frequency is joyous. To pray to God for spiritual help is paramount. God’s men must ask God for help. The man with God’s message must ask God to attend every part of his preaching — from his clarity, to his delivery, to his orderliness, to his command, to his authority, to his application, to his pauses, to his gestures, to his seriousness, to his power. All of the preaching event must be offered up in prayer as sweet-smelling incense upon the divine altar. He must pray, and pray again, and pray more, and pray in his praying, and pray confidently, and then pray desperately. Let the man of God, in his preparation and in his study, pray for the power of the Spirit to come upon him so that he would preach with Almighty power. Especially right before the minister preaches, he should spend as much time as possible earnestly asking for the Spirit to consume him, help him, attend his words, and make them like fiery, divine shafts which pierce even the hardest of stony hearts. Let him entreat God to loosen his lips so that every word that he speaks would be God’s words. Again, every man of God should seek God’s power by asking for it! So in all the preparation, and with all the outlining, and with all the planning, let the minister ask the Spirit of God earnestly to come with power, to rend the heavens, and to descend upon him so that he may mightily preach, in his weakness and yet in God’s strength, so that souls would be won for eternity!
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