Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

If you have seen Jesus in the past, try to see him again, and to be continually “looking unto Jesus.” Let not any of us go and talk to our Sunday school class, or preach from the pulpit, or write a letter about our Lord, until we have had a fresh glimpse of him. It is wonderful how nimbly the pen or the tongue moves when the eye has just feasted upon Christ. When you have yourself been with Christ, when you have just come forth from the ivory palaces of communion and fellowship with the Lord Jesus, all your garments will smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia; and your words will have some of the precious aroma clinging to them.

So again I say that we must see Christ or else we cannot be witnesses to him; therefore, let us fix our hearts, and our thoughts, and our meditations, so completely upon Christ that, when we cry to other men, “Behold the Lamb of God,” it will be because we have just beheld him ourselves.

If a man, who is blind, were to stand up in the street, and cry, “Behold,” people would be apt to ask, “What can a poor blind man tell us to look at? He cannot see anything himself.” If you say to the people, “Behold Christ,” yet all the while your eye is turned toward yourself, and you are wondering whether you will get through the sermon all right, whether you will have a fine conclusion at the end, and what the congregation will think of it when you have done, that will be like saying, “Behold!” while you yourself are looking round the other way, and other people will look in the same direction. They will be sure to do as you do, and not as you say; and if you do not behold Christ, neither will they. Our inward thought, and conviction, and belief must be in strict accordance with our outward speech, or else we shall belie ourselves, and our message will be ill delivered, and will fall without power upon our hearers.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe God’s grace for our doubts.

God deals with little faith as we used to do with a spark in the tinder, in the days of our boyhood. When we had struck a spark, and it fell into the tinder—though it was a very tiny one—we watched it eagerly, we blew upon it softly, and we were zealous to increase it, so that we might kindle our match thereby. When our Lord Jesus sees a tiny spark of faith in a man’s heart, though it be quite insufficient of itself for salvation, yet He regards it with hope, and watches over it, if haply, this little faith may grow to something more. It is the way of our compassionate Lord, not to quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

A resource for married men in your church

Next Friday, I’ll be launching a new FREE weekly newsletter — The God Centered Husband.

This is a short-and-sweet, Bible-focused, super practical email that will help you level up your marriage.

Each week, this newsletter is going to be saturated in Scripture and practical tools to help you pursue God AND pursue your wife.

I think this will be a really valuable resource for you to share with other men in your church. Subscribe now, so that you’ll be the first to receive the first newsletter next week. If you like it, consider sharing it with guys in your church.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“My work is to preach Christ crucified, which gives men salvation.” — Charles Spurgeon