God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
As those godly men were carried along by the Holy Spirit, He superintended their words and used them to produce the Scriptures. As a sailing ship is carried along by the wind to reach its final destination, so the human authors of Scripture were moved by the Spirit of God to communicate exactly what He desired. In that process, the Spirit filled their minds, souls, and hearts with divine truth— mingling it sovereignly and supernaturally with their unique styles, vocabularies, and experiences, and guiding them to produce a perfect, inerrant result.
One of the sorriest creatures in all the world is a preacher who does not pray, except in public. Even with the theology of Calvin, the illustrations of Spurgeon, and the searching applications of Edwards, if a pastor has not been alone with God in secret, he is a pitiful figure in the pulpit. Without secret prayer he is without unction, a lifeless shell. Though ministers may, as other true saints, fall into intervals of prayerlessness, he is no man of God in whom this condition prevails. He is a hypocrite who is all superstructure in plain view with no unseen foundation. Bright flowers without roots are plastic having no life.
