Pray with Spurgeon

WEEKEND EDITION

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PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH (BY SPURGEON)

Prepare your heart to gather with your church on Sunday. Join Spurgeon in prayer for the saints and sinners who will hear God's Word at your church tomorrow.

If any in your presence this weekend are unsaved, oh save them at our service. Grant that the services may bring such glad tidings to their ear that their heart shall leap at the sound of it and they shall return to God, who will abundantly pardon. Bless every preacher of the Word today, and all classes of young men and women, and every form of holy service.

Accept the prayers and praises of your people. Receive them even from the sick beds of those detained at home. Let not one of your mourners, the weary watchers of the night, be kept without a smile from God. The Lord bless us now, and all his chosen people. Our soul cries out for it. Break, oh everlasting morning, break over the dark hills! Let our eyes behold you, and until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, abide with us, our Beloved, abide with us now.

Amen.

SPURGEON’S LETTERS

Spurgeon's letters are really encouraging devotional readings. Today, we'll read a letter Spurgeon sent to his father at the height of public attacks against him in the London press.

Dear Father,

Do not be grieved at the slanderous libel in this week's paper. Of course, it is all a lie, without an atom of foundation; and while the whole of London is talking about me, and thousands are unable to get near the door, the opinion of a penny-a-liner is of little consequence.

Personally, I will rejoice; the devil is roused, the church is awakening, and I am now counted worthy to suffer for Christ's sake. Last night, I could not sleep until morning light, but now my Master has cheered me; and I "hail reproach, and welcome shame."

Your affectionate son,

Charles Spurgeon

WISDOM FROM SPURGEON:

Why does my love for Christ feel cold and distant?

This section of the Weekend Edition will include Spurgeon’s answers to timely questions. Respond to this email with your questions.

Often we do not love Christ, but only the conception we have formed of him. We think about Christ. Yet how few of us view our Lord as a real person — truly man, who could suffer and die, and truly God, as truly present as if we could see him with our eyes. We fail in our love because Christ is not as real to us as he was to the early church, who had little to say of truths about Christ; it was Christ himself — his hands, his feet, his side, his crown of thorns.

Imagine an infant taken from its mother, and you tried to teach it love by constantly picturing a mother to its mind. You would have a hard task. But give the child a mother; let it hang upon her, feel her, put its little arms about her neck — and you have no hard task to make it love her at all. So it is with us. We want not an abstract, doctrinal, pictured Christ, but a real one — really present, whom we may speak to and tell our wants — and then we shall love him as our soul loves.