Saints, I have been to the Puritan 'woodshed' many times with my Father. It is the most blessed place! God truly desires purity in his children, and I've found that this cleansing and heart-discerning school exists soley in the Word of God. The Holy Bible is the 'word' shed, and if you allow yourself to go there early each morning to wait on God's communion, your life will be staggered. Wait, saints, wait on the Lord with hearts free of deceit and condemnation. Cleanse your hearts and hands from the dirt of this world and wait upon God faithfully. In the early morning hours of darkness he will come, while the virgins slumber, and meet you and feed your soul in the covering of Christ's shed blood before the open pages of God's golden Book. - Brother Paul
"If we are ever prone to be proud of our Bible knowledge, we ought to open any volume of John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, or Thomas Brooks, note how some obscure passage in Nahum is quoted followed by a familiar passage from John -- both of which perfectly illustrate the point the writer is making -- and then compare our knowledge to theirs. How can we explain this marvelous -- for us, humbling -- grasp of Scripture other than that these [men] were ministers of the Word? These men obviously studied their Bibles daily, falling to their knees as God's Spirit burned the Word into their pastoral hearts.
Then, as they wrote or preached their evangelistic messages, one scriptural passage after another would come to mind. Our evangelistic efforts must be similarly grounded in the Bible. We must search the Scriptures more frequently and love the Word of God more fervently. As we learn to think, speak, and act more biblically, our messages will become more authoritative and our witness more effective and fruitful.
The Puritan preacher found his message in God's Word. "The faithful Minister, like unto Christ, is one that preacheth nothing but the word of God," said Puritan Edward Dering. John Owen agreed: "The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word." As Miller Maclure noted, "For the Puritans, the sermon is not just hinged to Scripture; it quite literally exists inside the Word of God; the text is not in the sermon, but the sermon is in the text. ... Put summarily, listening to a sermon is being in the Bible."
Puritan Richard Greenham suggested eight ways to read Scripture: with diligence, wisdom, preparation, meditation, conference, faith, practice, and prayer. Thomas Watson provided numerous guidelines on how to listen to the Word: Come to the Word with a holy appetite and a teachable heart. Sit under the Word attentively, receive it with meekness, and mingle it with faith. Then retain the Word, pray over it, practice it, and speak to others about it. "Dreadful is their case who go loaded with sermons to hell," Watson warned. By contrast, those who respond to Scripture as a "love letter sent to you from God" will experience its warming, transforming power. "Feed upon the Word," the Puritan preacher John Cotton exhorted his congregation.
Clearly, the Puritans sounded a clarion call to become intensely Word-centered in faith and practice. No wonder, then, that a typical page of a Puritan evangelistic sermon contains five to ten citations of biblical texts and about a dozen references to texts. Puritan preachers were conversant with their Bibles; they memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of texts. They knew what Scripture to cite for any concern. "Long and personal familiarity with the application of Scripture was a key element in the Puritan ministerial makeup," Sinclair Ferguson writes. "They pondered the riches of revealed truth the way a gemologist patiently examines the many faces of a diamond." They used Scripture wisely, bringing cited texts to bear on the doctrine or case of conscience at hand, all based on sound hermeneutical principles."
--Puritan Reformed Spirituality, Joel Beeke
