Let's pray again.

Father in heaven, I pray that as we undertake this weighty topic you would draw near to us now and be the teacher in this room.

We want to be a God taught people.

I pray that you would guard me from error, help me to be faithful to your word,

deliver us from the fire darts of the evil one who would shoot at our minds and our hearts

and grant that we would be full of faith and hope and joy in you.

Would you bring about your solid purposes to build preachers? I pray for the glory of your name, for the good of your

church and for the reaching of the nations.

And so come and help me.

Now I pray, grant me a fullness and a special anointing for this high calling here.

And may each of these brothers and sisters have attentive minds and docile humble hearts.

And so accomplish your good purposes and may the ripple effect go for decades and for thousands of miles I pray.

In Jesus name, amen. Those Ram lectures in 1994 were significant for me because I prepared them especially for this group and it was a very telling moment in my own experience.

I was 14 years into the ministry there and to sit down for the first time really for an extended period of time and labor and try to ask what do I do and define preaching for myself was very significant.

And so as I contemplated coming back here to do these, I thought I really would like to do that again.

And so I devoted myself to three new preparations.

Only there's one problem.

I didn't communicate evidently, accurately,

to whoever what I was going to talk about.

So I am going to talk about something totally

different than what's been advertised. So let me describe for you where I'm

going since none of you have seen any proper truthful

...