Preaching: If you had one word for preachers that you could pass along to them -- encouragement or advice or counseling -- what would you say?

Wiersbe: The same thing I heard W. A. Criswell say on the radio the other day: give your morning to God. Start your day with the Lord. Ministry is not what we do so much as what we are. Phillips Brooks said that when God wants to make a sermon, He first makes a preacher. The most important part of a preacher's life is the part that only God sees -- the time alone with God, when you're not sermonizing, when you're not preparing for public ministry, when you are a sinner worshiping a holy God. "Without me you can do nothing," said Jesus. He didn't say, "Without me you are handicapped." So I would say to every preacher: cultivate your spiritual roots and start each day with the Lord.

Let Him build you. I learned early in my life that I'm not an evangelist. I admire these people who can read John 3:16 and make three or four points and tell two or three stories and people get saved. I can't do that. That's not my calling. I'm doing the thing God called me to do; but if I didn't spend time everyday with the Lord and let Him build into me what He wants, I couldn't do what He wants. So my word would be that: cultivate your spiritual roots.

Preaching: Pastors have told me this is one of the toughest disciplines for them.

Wiersbe: But it's a lot tougher if you don't do it! When we were at the Moody Church in Chicago, I jealously guarded my Saturday evenings. There was a great deal of "evangelical nightlife" in Chicago. We could have gone to a lot of places, enjoying a lot of things; but on Saturday evenings, I would go to my study at home and prepare myself for the Lord's day. I would think through my message and talk to God. I would make sure there was nothing in the sermon that was not real to me. I would prepare my pulpit prayer. I wouldn't write it out but I would prepare it so that I wasn't praying the same thing every week. Because I'm an early riser and I spend time early in the morning with the Lord, we don't do a lot of late-night fellowshiping. Yes, it's a price to pay; but I wouldn't want it any other way. When you make preaching the priority of your ministry, everything else falls into place. You don't waste time here and there. You can't go to every meeting.