I knew the day would come.

My life, like yours, is increasingly becoming a digital one. At home, I was moving more and more away from filing papers to storing items electronically. I knew one day those three big, rusting, steel filing cabinets in our basement would have to go. Sitting there like artifacts in a museum, reminders of the past rarely visited, I realized that a time would arrive when their contents would be emptied, and the cabinets removed. Sure, important documents would still be kept in a small filing cabinet or security box. But why keep paper files of items in large cabinets that are already stored on multiple devices and backed up in the cloud?

Finally, it happened. A desire to declutter our basement drove me to do it. What satisfaction it was to haul those cabinets out to the curb. Then, literally within minutes and without any summons, a guy named Dan stopped by in a pickup truck and hauled them away to be scrapped. A natural tosser rather than a saver, I found joy in the freedom from the cabinet’s bulkiness in our home.

Yet that joy turned into a bit of unexpected melancholy as I pulled the wagon filled with their contents over to the fire pit. It was time to burn these papers, which mostly meant watching over two decades of my sermons go up in flames.

My mentor had taught me his sermon writing tips, which I dutifully practiced over the years. Half sheets of paper worked best, as you could tuck them into your Bible. This size of sheets meant you could carry them securely in place without them sticking out. Over the years, I had worked at keeping one point of my message to one of those half sheets, as it helped me to bring proportionality and timing to my preaching. Each paragraph of thought has a word or two circled or highlighted, so I can preach the thoughts rather than the exact words of the paragraph to maintain eye contact and connectivity with the congregation.

Once preached, sliding each message into a 6x9-inch manila envelope made for good storage. The Scripture text was written on the top left of the envelope and the title on the right for easy reference. The envelope size allowed for the sermons to be double-stacked side by side in the drawers of the filing cabinets. So much of my life and ministry were on those pages.

If you talk to my homiletics students today, they will tell you that York still teaches the above methodology for sermon notes. They also might tell you that I do not like them preaching from digital devices. (Some might even exaggerate and say I forbid it.) But I do strongly urge them to use the printed Bible and printed or written sermon notes in the pulpit. Why? Among other reasons I might offer, the printed Scriptures and notes are singularly devoted to the one purpose of reading and preaching God’s Word. Printed Bibles cannot send unwanted text messages or weather alerts when you forget to turn on airplane mode. Notes on paper cannot beep at you.

So, is it not a bit hypocritical of me to require students to use the printed word when I have burned all my own sermons? I do not think so. I still preach this way, though I dispose of my printed notes eventually. But the discipline of putting thoughts on paper (or at least on a computer screen that can be printed) preserves what is preached.

On that fateful day, I took a stack of those envelopes out of the wagon, placed them in the firepit made from Pennsylvania flagstone, and lit the fire. I watched as the flames first teasingly licked over the envelopes, as if they were not quite sure of the taste. But then they picked up a hungry intensity and began to eat away at the contents.

As I threw small bundles of envelopes on the fire, titles of messages caught my attention. Like the bursts of flame, flashes of emotion struck my heart as the titles brought to mind occasions, people’s faces, or a particular preaching moment. Sometimes an envelope would burn off and, as if the fire was preaching back to me my own message, one page would be exposed where I could read a portion, would begin to darken around the edges, then would peel off into the flames to reveal the next page.

Dusk came. The burning went on much longer than I expected. Ashes floated through the air, the white flakes gently landing around our yard, prompting inquiries from my children. When told what they were from, they responded with some of the same sadness I was feeling and then went on with their evening.

As darkness fell, and I continued to sit by the fire, I reflected more on the nature of preaching. Is not preaching itself a sacrifice by fire, an offering to the Lord that one prays is blessed by the Spirit’s fiery power to touch the hearts and lives of those who hear? And does not preaching emulate other characteristics of fire? Is not the preacher’s heart to be consumed by the message he is proclaiming? Do not preaching moments seem as fleeting as a lit match?

As I kept watching my sermons burn, more melancholy came over me in the dark by the fire. I thought of so many failings in the past—in my sincerity, in my urging, in my preaching for conversions, in my mindfulness of the eternity that every hearer faces, in my upholding the greatness of our God who Himself is a consuming fire. Prayers of repentance ascended with the smoke and flames even as tears of regret fell downward and splattered on the blackened stones ringing the fire. Echoes of words from the confession of Scottish ministers about their own preaching came to mind: “We do not speak and act like men in earnest. Our words are feeble, even when sound and true…and our tones betray the apathy which both words and looks disguise.”

I recalled that a few days earlier, to celebrate the end of the school year, some students in my homiletics class had arranged at my encouragement to watch a documentary on Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ life and ministry. We were all struck by the sincere testimonies of those who spoke about him in the movie, from children and grandchildren to the great theologians of our day. Yet what moved us most was hearing Lloyd-Jones’ actual voice.

Portions of his recorded sermons played to scenes of an empty Westminster Chapel with the pulpit from which he used to proclaim God’s Word. You could hear in his voice a holy, humble, growing intensity as he proclaimed in simple sincerity God’s Word. The documentary made it easier to imagine what it would have been like to sit there and be moved by the Spirit speaking through him. The movie’s title, a phrase from Lloyd-Jones’ own concise definition of what true preaching is, was apt: Logic on Fire.

We preachers cannot all be like Lloyd-Jones. Nor should we strive to be. Yet, in this short life, can we not pray that more of that Spirit that lit him would ignite the hearts of men across the land that step behind our pulpits? Can we not pray that every Lord’s Day and throughout the week true sacrifices by fire would be offered in their preaching? That ministers like the prophets of old would be having such encounters with God that they speak with His heavenly fire?

As another preacher once said long ago, if we want revival, it needs to be brought to the pulpit.

This article is based on a post that originally appeared on Gentle Reformation.