Daily EncouragementSample

“Enchanted but unchanged” is how Oswald Chambers describes Ezekiel’s congregation. It is a fair description of them and of many listeners to the word of God since then. For there is a captivating beauty about that word even to hardened hearts, and there is something arresting about the gifted preacher’s voice: a magnetism, which holds the seemingly indifferent. “I thought you did not believe in the gospel!” said someone to David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and skeptic, as he met him going to hear Whitefield in Edinburgh at five o’clock one morning. “I don’t,” Hume replied, “but he does!”

“My preaching is a failure if it can charm but not change,” was the remark of one gifted preacher. This is truth, which should rightly search our hearts. However, with Ezekiel and his hearers before us, we must not allow the enemy to discourage us unduly. We will not put too much weight on the expression of devotion at the door, nor will we become cynical. It is not our ability to enchant the crowd for thirty minutes which will vindicate us, but rather the truth we proclaim: “When all this comes true - and it surely will - then they will know that a prophet has been among them” (verse 33).