Seeking God's approval

The following searching comment is from Iain Murray's short bio of Thomas Chalmers (in A Scottish Christian Heritage, p. 94). It would be worth reading and contemplating before preaching:

The governing principle upon which the strength of all ministerial duties depends is regard for the approval of God.

If a minister lacks that principle his public work will be dominated by regard for himself or for the approbation of men.

Where that principle is truly present it will operate first in the sphere of the preacher's own inner life.

Chalmers expressed it thus:

How little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the one side, and of admiration, on the other! and surely it were a sight to make angels weep when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bosom to regale his hearers by the exhibition of himself, than to do, in plain earnest, the work of his Master.