Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Let us beware of playing at praying; it is insolence towards God. If I am called upon to pray in public, I must not dare to use words that are intended to please the ears of my fellow-worshipers, but I must realize that I am speaking to God himself, and that I have business to transact with the great Lord. Similarly, in my private prayer, if, when I rise from my bed in the morning, I bow my knee and repeat certain words, or when I retire to rest at night go through the same regular form, I actually sin instead of doing anything that is good, unless my very soul speaks to the Most High.

Do you think that the King of heaven is delighted to hear you pronounce words with a frivolous tongue and a thoughtless mind? If so, you do not know him at all. He is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. If you have any empty forms to ramble off, go and pour them out into the ears of fools like yourself, but not before the Lord of hosts. If you have certain words to utter, to which you attach a superstitious reverence, go and say them in the gaudy courts of the Catholic Church, but not before the glorious Lord of Zion. The spiritual God seeks spiritual worshipers, and only these will hill accept; but the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord and only a sincere prayer is his delight.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe true peace, which can only come from Jesus.

If you want peace before you get grace, you want the flower before you get the root, and you will be apt to be like little children who, when they have a piece of garden given them, will go and pluck up the flowers out of their father’s bed, and put the flowers into their own ground, and then say, “What a nice garden I have got!” But to their dismay, on the morrow all is withered. Better put the roots in and wait a week or two till they sprout, and then the flowers will be living ones, not borrowed ones. Do not seek after peace first. Seek after Christ first. Peace will come next.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Those sermons which are fullest of Christ are the most likely to be blessed to the conversion of the hearers.” — Charles Spurgeon