“Why does the sense of call need to be so powerful? Because, sooner or later, the preacher will have to cope with depression and a temptation to despair. Only a deep convicition of the call to the ministry will keep him through what the Puritans, following St. John of the Cross termed ‘the dark night of the soul’–when all hell seems to be let loose and despondency threatens to stifle the preacher. Yet the call and the anointing sustain the ministry. Clearly, it was this that took Jeremiah though his time of crisis.”

Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 23