Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Men’s hearts are very hard to affect. If you want to get at them for any worldly object you can do it. A cheating world can win man’s heart; a little gold can win man’s heart; a trump of fame and a little clamor of applause can win man’s heart. But there is not a minister breathing that can win man’s heart himself. He can win his ears and make them listen; he can win his eyes, and fix those eyes upon him; he can win the attention, but the heart is very slippery.

Yes, the heart is a fish that troubles all gospel fishermen to hold. You may sometimes pull it almost all out of the water; but slimy as an eel, it slips between your fingers and you have not captured it after all. Many men have fancied that they have caught the heart but have been disappointed. It would require a strong hunter to overtake a buck on the mountains; it is too quick for human feet to approach.

The Spirit alone has power over man’s heart. Do you ever try your power on a heart? If any man thinks that a minister can convert the soul, I wish he would try. Let him go and be a Sunday school teacher. He shall take his class, he shall have the best books that can be obtained, he shall have the best rules, he shall draw barriers around his spiritual fortress, he shall take the best boy in his class, and if he is not tired in a week I shall be very much mistaken. Let him spend four or five Sundays in trying, but he will say, “The young fellow is not able to fixed.” Let him try another. And he will have to try another, and another, and another, before he will manage to convert one. He will soon find “‘Not by strength or by might, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of Armies” (Zechariah 4:6).

Can a minister convert? Can he touch the heart? David said, “Your hearts are as fat as grease” (Psalm 119:70, KJV). That is quite true and we cannot get through so much grease. Our sword cannot get at the heart, it is encased in too much fatness; it is harder than a rock. Many blades have been blunted against the hard heart. Many pieces of the true steel that God has put into the hands of his servants has had the edge turned by being set up against the sinner’s heart. We cannot reach the soul; but the Holy Spirit can.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe prayers that are dependent on Jesus.

A person cannot always speak in the name of another; cannot do it at all unless he has received an authorization so to do. Then he stands as that person’s deputy; stands in his place; speaks in his name. I am sure that nine out of ten of the prayers of Christians are not offered in the name of Christ, and could not be. It would be a sin against Christ for such prayers to be supposed to be the prayers of Christ. But when we talk of the Spirit of God, and we dare ask in the name and use the seal of Christ, to set his signature at the bottom of our petition, then, brethren, depend upon it. Christ will do it.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Let your sermons be full of Christ, from beginning to end crammed full of the gospel.” — Charles Spurgeon