Before a single word is spoken from a pulpit, a war has already been fought. It happens in the quiet of a study on a Tuesday morning, in the restless hours before dawn on Saturday, in the hollow silence after a congregation files out on Sunday. The preacher who stands before God’s people each week does not arrive unscathed. He arrives, if he is honest, as a man who has wrestled—with his own heart, his own sin, his own doubt—before he ever wrestles with the text.
This is not a weakness unique to a few fragile ministers. It is the universal condition of every man or woman who has ever dared to open God’s Word and say, “Thus says the Lord.” Mike Bullmore’s recent piece at Crossway names five of these heart challenges with uncommon clarity and pastoral courage. Read the source article. But what Bullmore ultimately points toward—and what we want to explore more deeply here—is this: the gospel is not merely the content of faithful preaching. It is the very oxygen that keeps the preacher alive to preach it.
The Biblical Diagnosis: The Heart Is the Battlefield
Scripture does not flatter us. The prophet Jeremiah delivers one of the most searching verdicts in all of the Bible:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
This word is spoken to everyone, but it lands with particular weight on those in spiritual leadership. The preacher is not exempt from the deceitfulness of his own heart simply because he has been called to expose the deceitfulness of sin in others. In fact, the calling itself becomes a theater in which the heart’s corruptions find new and sophisticated costumes.
The apostle Paul knew this intimately. Even as he wrote with apostolic authority, he confessed, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). The inner conflict Paul describes is not the confession of a spiritually immature believer—it is the honest testimony of a man deeply formed by the gospel, who understood that sanctification is a lifelong battle, not a one-time achievement. The preacher who thinks he has graduated beyond the struggle with laziness, pride, or unbelief has not grown—he has simply grown blind.
Bullmore identifies five specific heart challenges: laziness versus happy labor, self-pity versus joy, manipulation of Scripture versus integrity, pride versus contempt of praise, and unbelief versus belief. Each of these is, at its root, a failure to believe and apply the gospel to oneself. Each is a form of practical atheism—living as though the grace of Christ were for the congregation but not for the man behind the pulpit.
Christ as the Answer the Preacher Cannot Preach Around
The great irony—and the great mercy—is that the gospel the preacher proclaims is the very cure for his own diseased heart. Jesus did not come only to save the congregation. He came to save the preacher too.
Consider the challenge of pride. Bullmore cites John Chrysostom’s warning that a preacher enslaved to applause will ultimately speak “more for the pleasure than the profit of his hearers.” This is a devastating pastoral failure. But the antidote is not mere self-discipline or a stronger resolve to be humble. The antidote is a fresh encounter with the crucified Christ. Paul writes,
“But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)
When the preacher truly beholds the cross—when he sees that Christ, the eternal Son of God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7), suffering the shame of crucifixion for sinners who deserved nothing—the hunger for human applause begins to wither. The cross does not merely teach humility; it produces it, by showing us a glory so vast that the praise of men becomes small by comparison.
And what of unbelief—perhaps the deepest challenge of all? The preacher who wonders whether his words accomplish anything is answered not by statistics or visible fruit, but by the living promise of God himself:
“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)
This promise is grounded in the character of the God who raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is the ultimate proof that God’s word does not fail. He said the grave could not hold his Son—and it did not. If God can raise the dead, he can work through a stumbling, imperfect sermon delivered by an exhausted pastor on a cold Sunday morning. The preacher’s faith rests not in his own eloquence but in the faithfulness of the One who sends the word.
Living It Out: Practical Gospel Application for the Preacher’s Heart
How, then, does the preacher practically apply the gospel to these inner battles? Here are three disciplines rooted in Scripture and the historic wisdom of the church:
- Preach the gospel to yourself before you preach it to others. Paul’s instruction to Timothy was not only to guard the doctrine but to “keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16). Begin each week of sermon preparation by confessing your own need for Christ. Let the text convict and comfort you before it convicts and comforts anyone else.
- Labor as one who works by grace, not for grace. Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians 15:10 is the preacher’s charter: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” Hard work and humble dependence are not opposites—they are the twin rhythms of gospel-driven ministry. Laziness is not humility. It is a failure to trust that God has genuinely called and equipped you for this task.
- Handle the Word with reverent integrity. The temptation to make a text serve a personal agenda is real and subtle. Paul’s standard in 2 Corinthians 4:2 is demanding: “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” Faithful exposition is itself an act of worship—a declaration that God’s Word is sufficient and does not need our improvements.
The Gospel That Holds the Preacher Together
Every preacher is, before he is anything else, a sinner saved by grace. He stands in the pulpit not because he has conquered his heart’s rebellions but because Christ has conquered them for him—and continues to wage that conquest through the Spirit who dwells within him. The same gospel he proclaims to the broken, the doubting, and the weary in his congregation is the gospel that gets him through the week to proclaim it.
This is the good news that must never be assumed, never be left implicit, never be treated as the starting point we move beyond: we are all sinners, separated from God by our rebellion, deserving of judgment. But God, rich in mercy, sent his Son Jesus Christ—fully God and fully man—who lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved to die, and rose bodily from the grave on the third day, defeating sin and death forever. He offers forgiveness, righteousness, and new life freely to all who repent and trust in him alone. This is not background theology. This is the air the preacher breathes, the water he drinks, the ground beneath his feet on every Sunday morning.
If you are a preacher reading this, be encouraged: the same Christ who calls you to the pulpit meets you in the study. He is not waiting for you to get your heart right before he shows up. He shows up to get your heart right. And if you are not a preacher but a believer who prays for those who preach—pray for this. Pray that the gospel would do its deep, sustaining work in the hearts of those who labor to proclaim it. The church is only as strong as the gospel that holds her shepherds together.
