Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

Thanks for praying with us this week. (Don't miss the weekend edition tomorrow!)

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ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

“… so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.” (Isaiah 55:11)

What comfort there is here for Christian workers, for you who proclaim God’s Word! Yours is no hap-hazard business; look at the “wills” in this verse: “my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”

When we make known God’s Word, we are not drawing a bow at random, we are not sowing seed which may or may not beget a harvest. It will, it will, it will; God said it three times. He is very fond of the number three; the Trinity is constantly revealed throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. When it is not spoken and declared as such doctrinally, you see its practical effect in the frequent threefold utterances of God.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the power of the Bible.

Certain plants are so full of vitality that if you only take a fragment of a leaf and place it on the soil, the leaf will take root and grow. It is utterly impossible that such vegetation should become extinct.

And so it is with the truth of God. It is living and incorruptible, and therefore there is no destroying it. As long as one Bible remains, the religion of free grace will live. More than that, if they could burn all printed Scriptures, as long as there remained a child who remembered a single text of the word, the truth would rise again. Even in the ashes of truth the fire is still living, and when the breath of the Lord blows on it, the flame will burst forth gloriously.

SHEPHERD YOUR HOME

Think back to the first time you potty-trained your kids.

It was a mess, wasn’t it? The accidents. The puddles. The seemingly never-ending stream of dirty laundry.

And yet, you weren’t ever tempted to just forget potty training and just leave your kids in diapers for the rest of their lives. Because you knew that wouldn’t be healthy. (Not to mention, really weird.) We won’t always be around to change diapers, and so our kids need to learn to take care of business on their own.

We need to take this same approach to teaching our kids the Bible. Reading it to our kids is GREAT, but we also need to teach them how to study it for themselves.

We won’t always be around and if our kids don’t know how to drink deeply from the living water of God’s Word, they can’t be spiritually healthy or safe.

Last week, I told you about the three foundations for lifelong faith that God Centered Family will help you lay for your kids: Bible habits, Bible knowledge, and Bible skills. When I say “Bible skills,” I mean equipping kids to engage with the Bible, ask good questions, and dive deeply into Scripture for the rest of their lives. We aim to equip kids to study the Bible for themselves (not just sit through it for their parents).

Here’s how we do it:

• Listening Guide Worksheets. For each book of the Bible, each kid is given an age-appropriate listening guide worksheet to use throughout our study of that book. These aren't busy work to keep kids quiet. These hands-on educational tools are subtly teaching kids to listen carefully, identifying repeating words and key themes in a passage or book.

• Reading Preview. Each day, we give you a two-sentence script to tell your kids what we're about to read. We're helping kids remember their place in the story and know what highlights to listen for so that they don't get lost in the details.

• Comprehension Questions. Each day, our devotionals will give you three discussion questions. The first question is very simple — to make sure your kids actually heard and understood what they just read. By asking these questions every day, we're teaching our kids how to listen intentionally to Scripture.

If we want our kids to be lifelong followers of Jesus, we need to teach them how to read, study, and apply the Bible with faithfulness.

One subscriber, Jonathan Cruz, told me how he was already seeing his daughter develop this kind of Bible reading skills: “Since we started using God Centered Family, my six-year-old daughter has been more attentive and asking questions.”

Isn’t that amazing?! A six-year-old who isn’t just sitting through God’s Word, but asking the right questions and seeking to understand it all.

And that’s the vision behind God Centered Family: your kids becoming lifelong students of Scripture because YOU TAUGHT THEM HOW to get everything they can from God’s Word.

Learn more about God Centered Family and subscribe right here.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching: where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing.” — Charles Spurgeon