Life & Wisdom Quote by Vance Havner

Havner’s line is a neat little ambush: it sounds like advice for ministers, but it’s really an accusation about how easily “the work” becomes a disguise for avoiding the work. The devil, in this framing, isn’t a cartoon villain; he’s a strategist of distraction, perfectly happy to bankroll religious productivity if it blocks spiritual honesty. That’s the sting. Sermon prep is virtuous on paper, measurable, applauded, and conveniently public. “Preparing himself” is private, inconvenient, and harder to quantify. Havner is warning that the enemy of faith isn’t always temptation in the obvious sense; it’s the busy, respectable substitute that lets you feel righteous while staying unchanged.

The subtext lands because it flips the usual moral math. We expect sin to look like indulgence, not diligence. Havner insists the more dangerous trap is professionalism: the preacher becomes a content producer, assembling biblical ideas like materials for a house he never lives in. “Let” is the operative verb. Evil doesn’t need to attack the sermon; it can cooperate with it, as long as it short-circuits repentance, humility, and self-examination.

Context matters: Havner wrote as a 20th-century evangelical voice suspicious of hollow religiosity and church-as-performance. The line anticipates a modern problem he couldn’t fully name: the way platforms, deadlines, and audience expectations reward output over integrity. It’s a critique of clergy, yes, but also of anyone who hides behind competence to avoid transformation.