God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
I think it is the preacher's responsibility to get attention and comprehension. It is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to produce yielding, retention, and action – that's not my job. All the slick techniques, all the gospel marketing packages, all the pulpit histrionics of jumping and stomping and flailing around, and doing whatever they do to create the mood. All the sad stories, the mood music, the endless invitations, the hand raising, the walking to the front, all of that kind of pressure is not preaching the Word. It has nothing to do with comprehension. The decision of yielding, surrendering and then retaining and acting, is between the hearer and God, and not the hearer and the preacher.
There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent as that of hatred. There are hatreds of race, sect and social and personal hatreds. If thoughts of hatred were thunder and lightning, there would be a storm over the whole earth all the year round.